Ukraine and the Crimea Question
post by ChristianKl · 2022-10-28T12:26:51.982Z · LW · GW · 153 commentsContents
How much fascism is there in Ukraine? The Second World War Decommunization laws Education reform of 2017 Street militia Crimea referendum and public opinion Retaking Crimea Conclusion None 153 comments
When the United States invaded Iraq, they were hoping to be greeted as liberators. In a similar vein, the current discourse suggests that if Ukraine uses its military to successfully liberate Crimea, Crimeans will greet Ukrainians as liberators. The West that currently supports Ukraine has to make a decision on whether to support Ukraine in retaking Crimea. Understanding what's likely going to happen in Crimea should Ukraine reconquer Crimea is vital to making good decisions.
Girard talks about how society uses scapegoating to assign the blame to one individual to end conflicts with other people. The Western media likes to scapegoat Putin because it is an easy way to relate to the conflict without having to understand anything about the underlying circumstances. In both 2014 and in 2022 Putin increased his approval rating by > +15% by ordering his military into Ukraine. If those conflicts just exist because Putin is crazy, it wouldn't push his approval that much. That's slightly more than the growth in approval that George Bush got when he started the Iraq war.
You could argue that George Bush only got this bump in approval because of the propaganda of the United States government and the willingness of the United States media to uncritically broadcast that propaganda. By the same token the Russian media also uncritically broadcasts their state propaganda that makes the population happier about going to war.
Unfortunately, it’s true that government propaganda makes citizens approve of war when they shouldn’t. War creates a lot of suffering and it would be great if nations would be more cautious about starting them. On the other hand, it shows that wars are often not just fought because the person at the top wants to fight the war. Many actors take part in a complex system that increases presidential approval at the start of a war.
How much fascism is there in Ukraine?
To understand the current conflicts, it’s vital to understand what the Russian discourse means when it talks about Nazis. Crimeans largely consume Russian media and their views are shaped by the Russian discourse. It’s both useful to understand what they think and what’s objectively happening.
Unfortunately, the current Western discourse isn’t very truth-seeking. Twitter censored a journalist who posted a collage out of photos obtained either from mainstream reporting or from primary sources — NATO’s official Twitter account, Tarrant’s manifesto, and Ukraine’s foreign ministry — because the collage focused on the Nazi symbols on those pictures.
While the main channels of our information landscape are filtered for propaganda, our free press still allows Western outlets to take all positions and publish their views freely, which allows us to inform ourselves if we actually search for sources. Many of the sources I use for this article are from Western human rights organizations and anti-fascist organizations.
To understand how Russia reacted in 2014 on the eve of the Maidan revolution, it’s worth looking at their position from 2008 as summarized by a confidential US Embassy cable (that we can access thanks to Wikileaks):
3. (U) Lavrov emphasized that Russia was convinced that enlargement was not based on security reasons, but was a legacy of the Cold War. He disputed arguments that NATO was an appropriate mechanism for helping to strengthen democratic governments. He said that Russia understood that NATO was in search of a new mission, but there was a growing tendency for new members to do and say whatever they wanted simply because they were under the NATO umbrella (e.g. attempts of some new member countries to "rewrite history and glorify fascists").
The Second World War
In the Nüremberg trials, we decided that one aspect of our global democratic culture is that those who engaged in the Holocaust and mass murdered Jews and other groups were war criminals even if their excuse was that they followed orders. Attempts to rewrite history and glorify fascists go both against our general Western consensus and against the desires of Russia, so we could agree that if that happens that’s bad.
One argument made, about why Russia’s claims of far-right influence in Ukraine are overblown, is that far-right parties don’t have much influence because they have relatively poor electoral results. In 2014, Svoboda achieved 4.7% and the Right Sector 1.7%. In the 2019 election, their results were also quite underwhelming. In 2019, Svoboda, who ran in alliance with the Right Sector, only achieved 2.25%. While it’s good that Ukraine’s far-right got few votes, the term "far-right" is relative to the local political spectrum. It’s worth noting that ideologically liberal parties Democratic Alliance or Syla Liudei are even weaker, and that the parties in Ukraine's parliament are mainly non-ideological.
According to the British Foreign Policy Centre:
Moreover, the ideological tradition of Ukrainian liberalism is underdeveloped and many of self-declared Ukrainian liberals are simply moderate nationalists in the crucial historical and language questions of Ukrainian national identity.
To understand what happened in Ukraine in the last decade, we have to look back at what happened during the Second World War.
In anticipation of the German invasion in May 1941, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists’ preparations included instructions for ethnic cleansing to its planned militia units; the instructions specified that "Russians, Poles, Jews" were hostile to the Ukrainian nation and were to be "destroyed in battle". Stepan Bandera was at a time a leader of the faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists in Kyiv where Ukrainian nationalists together with German death squads committed pogroms.
In 1943, after the battle of Stalingrad, it was clear that the tides in World War II turned. The Bandera wing of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and part of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army decided to engage in the ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia to have an ethnically pure Ukraine. According to Polish historians, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army killed around 100,000 Polish victims. Poland repeatedly demanded that Ukraine acknowledge the ethnic cleansing, but Ukraine refuses to do so in an official capacity.
Decommunization laws
In 2015, the Ukrainian parliament Rada voted for a series of five laws they called decommunization laws. One of those laws gives the historical Ukrainian archives to Volodymyr Viatrovych (over objections from the Union of Archivists of Ukraine), who worked to paint the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army as Ukrainian folk heroes. According to Jeffrey Burds, a professor of Russian and Soviet history at Northeastern University, his staff has a history of falsifying historical documents.
One of the laws calls for the demolishing of communist monuments, which is deeply unpopular in the regions with more native Russian speakers: according to a March 2015 survey in Kharkiv, only 11% supported the demolition while in Odesa it’s 18%. Given that Crimea has even more ethnic Russians, such demolitions would likely be even more unpopular in Crimea.
The justification of Volodymyr Viatrovych, who co-sponsored the laws, as described by AlJazeera is “Soviet influence on the country was the reason Russian President Vladimir Putin was able to gain a foothold in the country, and the laws were needed to undo this”. This is an interesting way to acknowledge that Russia didn’t just get Ukrainian territory because of the Russian military, but because a decent amount of the population in those areas welcomed the Russian occupation.
The laws declared among other Stepan Bandera, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army to be national heroes who aren’t allowed to be insulted. From my German perspective, where we consider the Holocaust as one of the worst episodes of the 20th century, declaring people who participated in the Holocaust to be national heroes who shall not be criticized feels deeply wrong. It’s also easy to see how this validates the belief that Kyiv is ruled by people who are quite fascist in the areas with a large Russian minority.
Trying to use government power to force a minority to change their views is bad, and in multiethnic states more likely to inflame the conflict than to make the minority just accept the views of the ethnic majority. If Biden would propose a Federal law that would call for the destruction of all monuments of leaders of the Confederacy, this would likely inflame partisan tensions in the United States and there’s also a good chance that the courts would find it unconstitutional because it infringes on the rights of the states. Decisions about which monuments to tear down aren’t well made at the federal level when the goal is to have multiple groups live in harmony together.
Education reform of 2017
In 2017, the Ukrainian Rada passed a law to reform its system of education. Part of the law is about general changes to the education system, such as teaching children for 12 instead of 11 years to be more in line with European standards. openDemocracy describes the effects of the law on Russian speakers as:
From the fifth grade on [... ] In Russian-language schools, all subjects apart from Russian language and literature (and in certain cases, connected subjects such as Russian cultural history) will be taught in Ukrainian.
FreedomHouse described the law by saying:
Mandating rather than simply encouraging Ukrainian-language schooling represents a swerve toward ethnic nationalism, and away from European allies.
[...]
Rather than using a “stick” approach to force ethnic minorities into the Ukrainian fold, lawmakers and supporters of the Ukrainian language could instead dangle a “carrot,” incentivizing minorities—through scholarships or community language courses, for example—to learn Ukrainian in a manner that gets results but does not hamper minorities’ cultural development or needlessly provoke resistance.
Right-wing ethnonationalism seems to me the best explanation for Ukrainians needlessly creating both internal conflicts that alienate internal minorities and conflicts with Europeans, at a time when Ukraine wants European support.
Street militia
Out of the Azov movement in 2017, the street militia National Militia was formed with the stated aim of assisting law enforcement and making street patrols. The group stormed a city council meeting in the central Ukrainian town of Cherkasy, forcing them to pass a new budget.
Ukrainian militias are rarely punished for acts of violence. After an attack on a remembrance gathering for two murdered journalists by C14, police detained the peaceful demonstrators instead of the attackers. Ukraine’s Ministry of Youth and Sports provided some funding for C14 to promote “national patriotic education projects”.
In 2018, Reuters wrote:
In an ideal world, President Petro Poroshenko would purge the police and the interior ministry of far-right sympathizers, including Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who has close ties to Azov leader Andriy Biletsky, as well as Sergei Korotkykh, an Azov veteran who is now a high-ranking police official. But Poroshenko would risk major repercussions if he did so; Avakov is his chief political rival, and the ministry he runs controls the police, the National Guard and several former militias.
Later Nikita Makeev, who wasn’t a Ukrainian at the time but a Russian, was part of a group that attacked the motorcade of former president Petro Poroshenko. After the attack, President Zelensky decided to give Makeev Ukrainian citizenship because he was an Azov veteran. In the United States, anybody who attacked the motorcade of a former president likely wouldn’t leave prison for a long time, and rewarding them by giving them citizenship would be unthinkable no matter what other desirable things they did.
In 2020, FreedomHouse wrote:
Violence and intimidation by far-right groups has taken place with near-total impunity, as Ukrainian law enforcement has rarely taken meaningful action to hold perpetrators accountable in recent years. This is primarily due to a lack of political will among policymakers and the Ukrainian public to take a stand on this issue in the context of the ongoing war. This failure of political will is complex and stems from many sources, ranging from genuine popular support for these groups as defenders of threatened Ukrainian identity, to powerful interest groups who stand to gain from the thriving industry of far-right thuggery.
According to the British Foreign Policy Centre:
The far right has also been the harshest critics of the Minsk Accords with Russia and Donbass separatists. They also strongly opposed any reconciliatory dialogue or even tolerance to the voices sceptical about or hostile to the official pro-Maidan narrative about 2013-14 events, which comprise a significant proportion of the public even in the governmental-controlled territories.
This essentially prevented the government in Kyiv from implementing the Minsk agreements and coming to peace with Russia before the 2022 invasion.
One example of this happened in 2015 when the Rada wanted to pass a law giving the separatist regions in the east more autonomy which was one of the points of the Minsk agreements. In an attack on the parliament, a Ukrainian soldier died from gunshot wounds, and 100 others were injured by a grenade blast. The law died.
Liberal projects such as the International Women's March have been repeatedly attacked with violence. In 2018, Vitalina Koval, who organized events on International Women’s Day, suffered chemical burns to her eyes in an attack.
By using street militia, the far-right has power that goes beyond its parliamentary representation and should be frightening for any minority whose opinions differ from those of the far-right.
Crimea referendum and public opinion
If we believe that Russia might have manipulated the counting of the referendum, the straightforward way to get a sense of what the Crimeans think is to look at polling data.
In the article Challenging annexation: in Crimea, the referendum, openDemocracy makes the case that Crimeans likely didn’t want annexation. The article argues:
In fact, an opinion poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology between February 8 to 18, 2014 (during the peak of the Maidan revolution in Ukraine) showed that in Crimea, public support for joining Russia was 41%.
According to Wikipedia, the Maidan revolution was from February 18 to 23. In Wikipedia’s recounting on February 22, police withdrew from central Kyiv, which as a result came under the effective control of the protesters.
On the eve of the referendum, FiveThirtyEight reported that the director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology didn’t think that polling history meant much. He also hesitated to poll Crimeans about the referendum because doing so could seem to legitimate it, a position at odds with Ukraine’s government.
The Right Sector is an organization that sees itself in the tradition of the guerrilla Ukrainian Insurgent Army from the 40s. On 19 January, the Right Sector encouraged its members to bring bottles to the protests to produce Molotov cocktails and bombs. The BBC describes their role by saying:
Activists claiming to be Right Sector members were involved in Kiev's Maidan protests from late November, but the group did not attract much attention until violent clashes with police in central Kiev on 19 January, in which it played a leading role.
By early February Mr Yarosh was saying the Right Sector had 500 fighters on Independence Square and could mobilise up to 5,000 nationwide, although close observers of the protests doubt this.
[...]
Some far-right activists interviewed by the BBC's Gabriel Gatehouse in Kiev in early March made it clear that they wanted a Ukraine "just for Ukrainians".
On February 23 the parliament voted to remove President Yanukovych when there weren’t any police to protect them. Yanukovych alleged that this vote was illegal and possibly coerced, and asked Russia for help. If the US capitol police would have withdrawn from the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the Senate would have voted to affirm Trump to be president, it’s unlikely that we would consider that vote to be legitimate.
To me, it seems straightforward that such a vote would drastically change the view of the Crimean population toward the value of seceding from Ukraine and being part of Russia. As an example of how the justification looked, Reuters recounts that a person at the voting booth said:
Vasilyeva voiced fears common among some of Ukraine’s native Russian speakers about the consequences of Yanukovich’s exit after protests in which over 100 people were killed. “We want to leave Ukraine because Ukrainians told us that we are people of a lower kind. How can you stay in such a country?” she said.
Beyond the result of the referendum that might be faked, we have opinion polls that were made after the referendum. In June 2014, a Gallup poll found that 71.3% of Crimeans saw the role of Russia in the crisis as mostly positive while only 8.8% saw it as mostly negative. In contrast, only 35.7% of people in eastern Ukraine believed that Russia's involvement was mostly positive.
82.8% of Crimeans saw the referendum as likely reflecting the views of most people in Crimea, while only 6.7% disagreed. 59.3% of ethnic Ukrainians and 83.5% of ethnic Russians in Crimea believed that Crimea's becoming part of Russia will make life better for them and their family.
In February 2015, German polling firm GfK did another poll. When they asked Crimeans "Do you endorse Russia’s annexation of Crimea?” 82% said “yes, definitely" and another 11% said “yes, for the most part”.
By March, openDemocracy also commissioned a poll and came around to believing that the annexation enjoys the widespread support of the peninsula’s inhabitants. Given that openDemocracy updated their view and has a good idea of how likely a poll is trustworthy, I consider their switch good evidence, that the polls that suggest Crimean approval of the referendum are valid.
When pollsters asked again in 2017 in Crimea, 86% of non-Crimean Tatars say they would expect the same result in a repeat referendum, while 52 percent of the surveyed Crimean Tatars would also expect the same result. This is against the backdrop of a worsened economic situation.
A big part of why the economic situation in Crimea worsened is that Western nations sanctioned Crimea strongly after the annexation. The sanctions of the United States toward Crimea has similar to those against Iran, Sudan, Syria, and North Korea. Punishing Crimeans for voting for the annexation feels morally wrong to me. There’s no good moral reason to sanction Crimea more strongly than the rest of Russia unless one believes that punishing Crimeans for their vote is more important than punishing Moscow.
Retaking Crimea
If Ukraine would retake Crimea, it would likely require waging war in the territory that kills civilians, and that destroys houses and infrastructure. From the war Ukraine is waging the current way, we already know that Ukraine does not prioritize avoiding civilian harm. Given that Crimea’s accepted the referendum, they would likely hold Ukrainians responsible for that harm.
Together with a project of stopping the majority of native Russians from having their children taught Russian and the tear down of monuments in the spirit of the 2015 law, Crimeans are likely to be very unhappy about being under Ukrainian governance. Very likely, that will lead to continued armed resistance. The only way to face that armed resistance from the Ukrainian side would be to let armed militias deal with it. That would likely involve a lot of violence against Crimeans and make them even less happy about being under Ukrainian governance.
Conclusion
The fight of Ukraine against Russia is not one with clear lines between good and evil. Both sides commit harm in countless ways and don’t value Western norms of the protection of minority rights or having a political landscape that’s free of violent coercion.
Crimeans deserve to live happy lives and a peace agreement that settles the current conflict and that respects the referendum of 2014 according to the wishes of Crimeans while removing the sanctions against Crimea, would be what’s best for Crimeans.
The ability to give up Crimea means also having room to negotiate in a way that allows Putin to come to the table to end the war. This means we could negotiate a peace deal that would end the current risk of nuclear war. If we focus our rhetoric on the desires of Crimeans, we could do the deal in a way that wouldn’t set a precedent for landgrabs of territory where the local population doesn’t want to be under Russian control, like in the Balkans.
153 comments
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comment by Raemon · 2022-11-07T23:13:32.113Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This post has a number of newer users engaging, and I wanted to take a moment to note: LessWrong has some fairly subtle norms on political discussions. If your first comments on LessWrong are on political topic, moderators may be giving you a bit extra scrutiny.
In general we ask all new users to read through the sequences (aka "Rationality A-Z"). But in particular, if you're going to comment on political topics on LessWrong, I ask you to have read through the LessWrong Political Prerequisites sequence [? · GW].
Politics is a more difficult place to train your rationality. And while it is sometimes important to discuss on LW, I'm most excited to see users joining the site if they are also interested in discussing other topics.
Replies from: nazarii-melnychuk↑ comment by Nazarii (nazarii-melnychuk) · 2022-11-08T23:42:41.751Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If your first comments on LessWrong are on political topic, moderators may be giving you a bit extra scrutiny.
As a new user I registered to discuss Large Language Models, but it is very difficult for me to accept that LW is giving platforms posts like this one. It’s not at all rational, it’s shockingly biased.
I’m Ukrainian and I welcome anybody to come and validate their assumptions after the end of war. It would be a big update of world model for some
Replies from: ChristianKl, TAG↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-09T00:20:37.934Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
it’s shockingly biased.
There's a phenomenon called hostile media bias, that makes it very hard to know what's biased when you are invested in one side of a war.
From the outside view, you can easily make the prediction that a neutral post on Ukraine would feel biased for you.
Replies from: nazarii-melnychuk↑ comment by Nazarii (nazarii-melnychuk) · 2022-11-09T02:33:38.142Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It would be neutral if there was a second part “Russia and the Crimea question”. Or “Crimean Tatars and the Crimea question”, which I guess is more fair to the minorities. Don’t you agree? Those posts would do well to discuss Crimean Tatars deportation during the time of USSR, as well as NKVD / KGB / communist repressions and cleansing of intelligentsia in Ukraine during 1930 - 1960. Also the recent ones in 2015, were tatars were abducted or killed by Russians.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executed_Renaissance
Executions of other intellectual leaders is the reason Bandera is so used in the current culture. With his numerous (factual) issues he represents a symbol of a military resistance at the time when civil resistance was not possible.
If you are interested in less controversial figures, I might point you to Mykhailo Hrushevsky, who tried a middle way, and was hated by officials both in Tsar and Bolshevik Russia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykhailo_Hrushevsky). His solutions didn’t work out because Russia was unwilling to compromise towards Ukraine as a state. His legacy was destroyed (his daughter died in the Gulag, his historical collections were destroyed in Kyiv after his house burned down from a weirdly specific artillery strike ordered by a Russian commander).
The reason some of the western publications feel neutral for you, is because the coverage of Ukraine was shaped by Russia for a long time before 2014. As well as multiple Ukrainian media were owned by Russian or Russia-loyal oligarchs.
I remember anti-NATO protests in Crimea being highlighted in the media at the time (2004-2008) when most of the Ukrainian population didn’t even care about the alliance.. But it is in line with Putins current rhetoric.
And to address the common questions:
- yes there is corruption in Ukraine. Created by both new Ukrainian politicians and ex-Soviet, Russia loving old style oligarchs.
- no there is no fascism in Ukraine. It’s a modern country with liberal values, with democratically elected presidents
- yes, there are Nazis. And communists. None of them have control, the government is quite technocratic and Zelensky platform was essentially “peace, trade, EU, less bureaucracy”.
I could write a longer post, but I’m not a historian, nor a media critic. But I think a more diverse set of sources is better for the understanding of the situation.
And for the love of god, please please don’t quote RT, its current editor-in-chief is quite literally calling for a genocide on a Russian state television. (Note: I didn’t read through all the comments, please disregard if you feel like this is some kind of accusation)
Replies from: ChristianKl, ChristianKl, nazarii-melnychuk↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-09T09:11:06.973Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The reason some of the western publications feel neutral for you, is because the coverage of Ukraine was shaped by Russia for a long time before 2014. As well as multiple Ukrainian media were owned by Russian or Russia-loyal oligarchs.
I'm not citing any Ukrainian media with the exception of the one translation (and if you think it's a wrong translation feel free to point out how you think it should be translated). I'm citing among others people that the US sent to Ukraine to teach the Ukrainians how liberal democracy works after the fall of the Soviet Union. I'm citing the kind of people who Russia blames for causing the 2014 revolution.
And to address the common questions:
Why don't you address the points actually made in my article when you comment on it instead of questions people ask elsewhere? Do you feel like the topic of the street militias is too uncomfortable to address?
Replies from: nazarii-melnychuk↑ comment by Nazarii (nazarii-melnychuk) · 2022-11-09T12:26:21.771Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I can address the topic of street militias:
-
some kind of them existed in 2013 - 2014, as an aftermath of the revolution
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you would be hard pressed to find any right now, especially armed
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local level politicians typically ask different military veteran groups to support their cause & protest, that is always peaceful and is done because of the elevated status of the military in the society.
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the ones that used to attack pro-LGBT rallies or Romani people are markedly different groups. These are following in the steps of other European neo-nazi movements and don’t have representation in Verkhovna rada or political influence. Many of those groups are less than 100 - 500 people and are disconnected with each other because of major differences. I don’t think anybody approves of them, but they are defending the country and are getting killed trying to stop the invasion.
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there are ultras who are a different radical group altogether and don’t belong in your definition of “street militia”
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in Zakarpattya region you could find local “lords” trying to force their power in 2015. I don’t remember if their gangs were armed or not, but there were major standoffs with police. Being a major contraband path + having a large influence from Hungary (to the point of people having both Hungarian and Ukrainian citizenships), and Russia (through Medvedchuk and his colleagues), it’s always has been a bit of difficult region.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-09T16:51:42.263Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Part of the 2022 war, is certainly that anybody who can fight is on the front lines and not engaging in street milita activities. It makes more sense to look at the pre-invasion state of affairs. After the war, there will also going to be a bunch of armed people who need to find other activities to spend their time.
You can measure the political influence of those groups by the amount of government persecution they get when they commit crimes. Being able to attack an ex-president and afterward getting honored by getting given citizenship suggests massive political influence.
Part of what the EU wants from Ukraine as precondition for membership is to pass a law protecting minority rights. If a president campaigns on being pro-EU and is not able to pass such a law that suggests pretty strong opposition to those. What laws get passed matters more than campaign promises.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-09T08:11:07.156Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It would be neutral if
Do you understand what hostile media bias happens to be?
Replies from: nazarii-melnychuk↑ comment by Nazarii (nazarii-melnychuk) · 2022-11-09T12:54:05.605Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yes I understand your point. I do think your post is formulated to support your confirmation bias. Like the issues of Crimea and Nazis are different issues, it’s not clear to me why they are clumped together if you’re not using one of them in your conclusions.
Those have lower correlation than say “rise of Ukraine as independent successful country” and “Russia feels compelled to invade”. And to take it from Putins mouth, he said multiple times that Ukraine is not real country, and that thesis survived multiple iterations of his speeches over this year
When I read your post, to me it’s: “Ukraine always had Nazis -> therefore it’s was OK for Russia to save its minorities -> they will hate being in Ukraine again, according to independent pollsters”
While my view is: “Ukraine always had Nazis -> what does it have to do with Russia invading the neighbor country multiple times without any provocation” and “are we sure that polls in the occupied and resettled territory are trustworthy?” and “referendums with a gun to a persons head are incredibly untrustworthy”
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-09T15:22:51.846Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
therefore it’s was OK for Russia
The question is not so much about "what's okay" but why did they do what they did. How does the situation likely look from the Crimean perspective?
This is the kind of thing where hostile media bias comes into play. Given your involvement in the conflict for you "what's okay" is very central. If you start by focusing on judging things as okay or not you will have a very hard time actually understanding the motivations of the involved stakeholders.
“Ukraine always had Nazis -> what does it have to do with Russia invading the neighbor country multiple times without any provocation
"Ukraine always had Nazis" if you read my article, you would find that it points to things that actually changed. Nazis in Ukraine didn't use to be powerful enough to get the people they look up to who did ethnic cleaning to be declared as folk heroes but that changed in 2015.
People didn't prevent laws from being passed by injuring 100 people with a grenade in front of parliament pre-2015. Particularly laws about minority protection.
You aren't engaging with the actual arguments I made.
↑ comment by Nazarii (nazarii-melnychuk) · 2022-11-09T03:05:23.319Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
On the topic of monuments, there is an argument to be made about moral equivalence of Russian Communism (and by extension Russian Nazism) and German Nazism, and why the world at large prohibited one but not another. I have no answers to that one though
↑ comment by TAG · 2022-11-09T00:12:38.499Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It would help if the no politics rule was real and consistently enforced.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-09T00:33:33.639Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
LessWrong never had a strict no-politics rule. It has a norm of "if you speak about politics put in the effort". In this case, I did this by searching for a lot of sources and limiting myself to Western sources for my main post.
When I was speaking about non-Western sources in the comments I did it with the appropriate disclaimers of "I'm not certain that this is true, but this is a claim out there". This kind of distinguishing of the epistemic status is also something that comes out of putting effort into it.
comment by throwaway62654 · 2022-10-29T08:51:03.432Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I've talked to a number of people living in Crimea over the years. Some were pro-Russian, some were pro-Ukrainian, some undecided. Here are some observations.
People weren't particularly afraid of Ukraine. But since 2014 literally everyone is afraid to say openly anything that's not supportive of Russia. Fear is everywhere. So much for accurate polling data. Since February 2022 people became much more afraid of Russia. I talked to people who fled Crimea after the announcement of mobilization. They were in panic.
Since 2014 a lot of people left Crimea. Instead a lot of Russians moved to Crimea. People living in Crimea now and Crimean people in 2014 are two completely different sets of people. It feels like one third of people in Crimea are from Russia now.
I know people who were born in Crimea and still were forced to go through a lengthy, complicated and humiliating procedure of proving they are Crimean enough to be allowed to live in Crimea. I know a person who went through an unnecessarily humiliating questioning by Russian FSB for no other reason than going from Crimea to Kyiv.
Now more general thoughts.
One doesn't have to be an expert to see which side caused more death. Mariupol. All war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine pale in comparison to an entire city leveled to the ground. While people were still there.
All that said nothing I said above or you said in your post matters. Nuclear risk and global security matter. I understand why in politics you have to first prove someone's not a good guy before suggesting to stop helping. I did not expect to hear something like this here. I just don't see how the conclusion you're making follows from the statements you make in the post even if all of them are true.
For some reason public discourse in the Western countries gravitates towards either "let's stop helping Ukraine" with weak justifications like "will of the Crimean people" and "Ukrainians aren't saints too" or going all in up to directly fighting Russian army on the ground. I think policy of helping Ukraine but not engaging Russian army directly (basically just sticking to what's already being done) is superior to either extreme.
Replies from: mwacksen, Gunnar_Zarncke, ChristianKl↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-10-29T10:58:48.145Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
For some reason public discourse in the Western countries gravitates towards either "let's stop helping Ukraine" with weak justifications like "will of the Crimean people" and "Ukrainians aren't saints too" or going all in up to directly fighting Russian army on the ground.
Yes, this is a good point.
I think policy of helping Ukraine but not engaging Russian army directly (basically just sticking to what's already being done) is superior to either extreme.
Wait what? I mean yes, obviously this is superior to batshit crazy options like sending troops to Ukraine or telling Russia it owns Ukraine now, but in terms of nuclear risk and global security it's pretty stupid. The current approach incentivises both Ukraine and Russia to continue and escalate as they both ultimately see themselves as prevailing given enough time.
Replies from: throwaway62654↑ comment by throwaway62654 · 2022-10-30T06:05:49.157Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't see better options. What would you suggest?
It's pretty hard to disincentivise anyone to fight. Ukrainian population wouldn't accept defeat. Putin can't either. Both will fight regardless of whether they see themselves prevailing eventually. It's worth noting that Putin probably cornered himself by formally annexing more territories on purpose.
One would think that maybe we can make some kind of a peace deal. Maybe Ukraine recognizes Crimea as Russian in exchange for stopping hostilities? The problem is it's not the first time. The first time was in 2014. No one responded to the annexation of Crimea. Just a couple of months later Russian agents start a war in Donbass. Then in 2015 there was a peace deal freezing the conflict. Everyone in the West was afraid of supporting Ukraine in retaking Donbass. They thought it might provoke Putin. Which gave him time to prepare for a full scale invasion. If there's another peace deal now Russian army would most likely use the next few years to recruit and train more soldiers and produce more weapons. And boom, a bigger invasion.
It may sound counterintuitive but my intuition says that the best we can hope for is this war never ending without any side having a decisive victory.
One of the underlying assumptions here of course is that letting Russia to just grab land is bad. It's hard to estimate probability of WW3 through the same mechanism as WW2. But probably not low enough to just let Russia do what it wants.
Replies from: mwacksen↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-10-30T08:26:42.386Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't see better options. What would you suggest?
The situation is pretty difficult,
a) Providing clear, unambiguous and automatic mechanisms for repealing Western sanctions that are also realistic (i.e. not "we drop sanctions once you get out of Crimea"). While I also like Bryan Caplan's suggestion to offer asylum + military compensation to defecting Russian soldiers, I recognize that this is politically not feasible.
Sanctions that are not directed at the military antagonize the Russian population. Somewhat counterintuitively, they can even lead ordinary Russians to increase their support for Putin.
b) Recognition of the annexation of Crimea, subject to a (future) internationally recognized referendum legitimized by a UNSC resolution and potentially some kind of autonomy within Russia. Ideally, this would be modeled on Kosovo or Hong-Kong in some way.
c) Some form of Minsk III that gives hard guarantees to Donetsk/Luhansk for a referendum, or makes them de facto independent states that are de-jure part of Ukraine.
d) Making weapons-deliveries to Ukraine conditional on Ukraine stating that it might be willing to give up Crimea + DNR/LNR under suitable terms. Something like this for the Russian side could be (a).
While I recognize that Russia will try to game this as far as possible, the main issue I see with this is that it may incentivize similar behavior by other states in the future. Borders are supposed to be fixed not because this is "fair" or anything, but to avoid people starting wars over borders.
Replies from: throwaway62654↑ comment by throwaway62654 · 2022-10-31T07:37:54.457Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
(a) There's nothing valuable Putin would willingly give in exchange for repealing sanctions. He doesn't care that much. And potential marginal increase in Putin's support doesn't matter either. The goal of sanctions is not to incentivize regime change. The goal is to make it a bit more difficult for him to wage the war.
Asylum and financial rewards for defecting Russian soldiers were announced by Ukraine in the beginning of the invasion. But I don't know how well it works in practice.
(b) Putin will never allow an election or a referendum that he doesn't control.
(c) Russian constitution now says Donetsk and Luhansk are parts of Russia.
(d) This is something that may end up as the solution the US chooses, maybe after the next presidential election. The problem is it doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Which is how Ukraine will protect itself against the next much bigger invasion. The amount of military equipment Ukraine currently receives is inadequate for the next invasion. So if you want to ask Ukraine to stop its counteroffensive without allowing Putin to do what he wants you would need to give Ukraine much more equipment. Hundreds of billions dollar worth of weapons. Instead of $40+B it received so far. But then what is there to stop Ukraine from retaking Crimea anyway.
That's why I say that the best we can hope for is that the war goes on without any side having a decisive victory. That way Russian army will hopefully lose soldiers and equipment as fast as they are mobilized and Ukraine can protect itself with just around $50B worth of weapons per year.
Replies from: ChristianKl, mwacksen, Tapatakt↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-31T14:24:31.801Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Which is how Ukraine will protect itself against the next much bigger invasion. The amount of military equipment Ukraine currently receives is inadequate for the next invasion.
Why do you believe that Russia is capable of a much bigger invasion?
Replies from: throwaway62654↑ comment by throwaway62654 · 2022-11-01T04:02:12.160Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Putin already showed willingness to increase number of people fighting. Russia lacks time to train them. Given enough time it would train them much better. There's no major obstacles to an another round of mobilization. Also number of active soldiers in Russian army is more than a million. Only ~200K of them were used in the invasion. Russian economy is going strong (just -3% this year according to IMF). Only ~5% of Russian GDP is spent on military this year. Usually it spent around 4% of its GDP. You know, looking at those numbers I start to question even more where this whole narrative of "Russia is losing, don't corner Putin" is coming from.
In comparison Ukraine lost more than a third of its GDP and spends almost half of the remaining part on the military.
↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-10-31T13:58:00.479Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The goal of sanctions is not to incentivize regime change. The goal is to make it a bit more difficult for him to wage the war.
A nice story, but I don't buy it. How exactly does banning Russian flights to Europe, or banning Russian tourists, or banning Russian bank accounts with more than €100k from transacting make it a bit more difficult for him to wage the war? Or confiscating/stealing the wealth of oligarchs? If Putin "doesn't care that much" about sanctions, isn't it pretty stupid that the West is shooting themselves in the foot, and the developing world in the face, by still applying heavy sanctions?
(b) Putin will never allow an election or a referendum that he doesn't control.
Maybe not, but better than not trying at all. Putin's rhetoric about the West being hypocritical is spot on, except for the fact that Russia is just as hypocritical. Offering Putin the "rules-based" and law-based international order he has been asking for since at least 2008 is in my opinion a no-brainer, even if he goes on to reject it.
(c) Russian constitution now says Donetsk and Luhansk are parts of Russia.
Yes. Though I'm not sure it's the constitution that says this or the law. I don't see how this problem is unique to what I'm proposing, if Ukraine just gradually keeps winning like it is doing right now, the Russian constitution/law will still say this, and it will be an even bigger problem.
The problem is it doesn't solve the fundamental problem. Which is how Ukraine will protect itself against the next much bigger invasion.
Again: I see this argument thrown around a lot, but nothing solves this fundamental problem, so the existence of this problem proves nothing. Even a long dragged out war doesn't stop Russia from showing up again, with more firepower, in the future.
Fundamentally, Russia has nukes and Ukraine does not. In this sense, anything that de-escalates this war, while at the same time convincing Russia and China that trying something like this is a bad idea, is the way to go. If Russia decides that it doesn't like the way the West is supporting Ukraine, it has the means to escalate. In the end, the way I expect this to go is for Russia to credibly threaten/use some kind of nuke in Ukraine, and thereby forcing an agreement with the West. Alternatively, the West gets bored of Ukraine after another year of fighting and Russia slowly but surely takes the regions it has annexed. But saying "I hope everything keeps going like it is going" is magical thinking - the war will end, and I think it makes more sense to reason about the end-state than to pretend it can keep going like this forever.
Replies from: mruwnik, throwaway62654↑ comment by mruwnik · 2022-10-31T22:23:41.936Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Sanctions are of 2 types: strategical and moral. The first kind are aimed at stopping an adversary from being able to produce vital stuff, like the recent chip embargo on China. These are often quite effective at producing an effect, as can be seen in how Russia is having massive logistical problems and having to pull out old Soviet tanks, rather than producing new one. The second kind are to show people that you're Doing Something and that you are Very Serious. These are very much less effective. Though they're aimed at appeasing the people at home, rather than changing how a foreign actor acts. The current sanctions are a big bag of both kinds, some of which are in fact quite successful at what they're supposed to do, i.e. make it harder for the Russians to wage war.
Russia has an interesting history of loosing wars to embarrassingly weaker opponents, which then trigger deep changes. Not that it's a rule or anything, but it is suggestive. Though frankly I'm not sure if I'd prefer someone other than Putin in charge of the nukes. He at least seems rational, albeit working under the wrong assumptions.
Replies from: mwacksen↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-11-01T11:34:15.806Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I agree, though sanctions are always sold as being strategic even when they are moral.
The fact that Putin has not used nukes yet is to his credit, but I do think that there is a marked shift in his demeanor from how would sound in speeches before to now. Make of that what you will.
↑ comment by throwaway62654 · 2022-11-01T07:07:05.483Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If Putin "doesn't care that much" about sanctions, isn't it pretty stupid that the West is shooting themselves in the foot, and the developing world in the face, by still applying heavy sanctions?
Sanctions turned out to be pretty underwhelming. And surely, one can easily see that the portfolio of sanctions could be much more effective. Personally I think some sanctions are needed but much better thought through.
Maybe not, but better than not trying at all.
If you mean something like we tell Putin "If you do the referendum with the UN supervision and allow pro-Ukrainian people in Crimea to freely and publicly debate with pro-Russian people, then we would recognize Crimea as Russian if and only if after long debates people in Crimea still decide to be in Russia". Then yeah, sure. Everybody would laugh themselves to death. But at least there's no downside. On the other hand, if you mean something like stopping fighting after Putin promises to do a fair referendum you would just significantly increase chances of Ukraine ceasing to exist.
Even a long dragged out war doesn't stop Russia from showing up again, with more firepower, in the future.
But that's the whole point. A dragged out war steadily destroys Russian firepower and manpower. At the same time every Ukrainian child hit by a rocket makes the US send more firepower to Ukraine. Which acts as a counterbalance to the fundamental asymmetry between Russia and Ukraine. If you stop the fighting Russia will stop losing its army and Ukraine will get much less military aid.
But saying "I hope everything keeps going like it is going" is magical thinking - the war will end, and I think it makes more sense to reason about the end-state than to pretend it can keep going like this forever.
Let's consider some strategies the US can use.
Just support Ukraine. At some point Ukraine probably goes "too far" and nukes may be used in Ukraine. At this point the US can either engage directly, continue support Ukraine or negotiate some kind of a deal for Ukraine. The first may start WW3. A deal would mean Putin wins. Continuing to support Ukraine would mean millions more dead. But it would be contained to Ukraine and Russia. And let's say Putin would have payed his cost for invading Ukraine. If Ukraine doesn't accept defeat after being nuked it would be the best deterrent to future uses of nuclear weapons since they don't achieve the desired outcome of quick victory.
Calibrate military aid to make sure neither Ukraine nor Russia win. In theory you can prolong the war until either Putin dies or internal politics in Russia destabilizes after a couple million coffins are sent back from Ukraine. The obvious problem is that you can't control how the war works precisely. Maybe you can ask Ukrainians to slow down a bit from time to time.
Make a peace deal. Putin repeats after a couple of years and wins.
As I said before if Putin wins chances of WW3 become too high.
Optimal strategies are either steady support no matter what (including nukes) or calibrated aid. I'm really anxious because I think the current policy is steady support but with direct engagement in case of nukes. I'm also afraid that fans of a peace deal prevail and we'll still get a WW3, just a bit later.
I mean we can talk about unrealistic scenarios. You could easily solve the whole crisis by admitting Ukraine to NATO overnight with a condition that it recognizes 5 already annexed regions as Russian. But then again, unrealistic.
Replies from: mwacksen↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-11-01T11:29:46.372Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Then yeah, sure. Everybody would laugh themselves to death.
It's not that simple. Nobody in the West is even in principle open to Crimea becoming Russian (and for good reason). So this wouldn't be as ridiculous as you make it sound, especially given Putin's rhetoric over the years and how salty he is about Kosovo.
But that's the whole point. A dragged out war steadily destroys Russian firepower and manpower.
That's one way of seeing it, but neither Russian firepower nor manpower should be thought of as a fixed finite resource. If Russia's current strategy does not work, it would be idiotic for it to keep its current strategy, so it will adapt. We know that it is capable of doing so, see e.g. the withdrawal at Kiev. If Russia were fighting an existential war for survival and had already pulled all the stops, steadily destroying Russia would be a viable strategy. But Russia has no interest in being steadily destroyed, and still has plenty of ways it could escalate, especially when it comes to actions that hurt the West.
At some point Ukraine probably goes "too far" and nukes may be used in Ukraine. At this point the US can either engage directly, continue support Ukraine or negotiate some kind of a deal for Ukraine. The first may start WW3. A deal would mean Putin wins. Continuing to support Ukraine would mean millions more dead. But it would be contained to Ukraine and Russia.
I'm so confused. So the endgame you would like is that Russia nukes Ukraine, but Ukraine keeps fighting Russia (who has nukes, and is willing to use them). Does this keep going until there is no Ukranian left to fight, at which point the US just sends drones to Ukraine to keep fighting? Are Ukranians more willing to die for their country than Japan was in 1945?
But it would be contained to Ukraine and Russia.
It's already not contained to Ukraine and Russia (see: the shattered remains of NS1 and NS2 on the sea floor), so even more magical thinking here. If Russia detonates a nuke in Ukraine, the best case is that absolute chaos breaks out in European cities.
Make a peace deal. Putin repeats after a couple of years and wins.
Why would he win in a few years if he cannot win now?
As I said before if Putin wins chances of WW3 become too high.
You really haven't explained this reasoning? So Putin "wins", and therefore decides to nuke Europe to celebrate?
You could easily solve the whole crisis by admitting Ukraine to NATO overnight with a condition that it recognizes 5 already annexed regions as Russian. But then again, unrealistic.
Russia would call that bluff the moment it was made.
Replies from: throwaway62654, ChristianKl↑ comment by throwaway62654 · 2022-11-04T08:31:47.689Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If Russia's current strategy does not work, it would be idiotic for it to keep its current strategy, so it will adapt.
This gave me an interesting thought. Either Putin thinks retreating is deadly for him or not. If he does he will keep sending more forces to be steadily destroyed. If he doesn't retaking Crimea wouldn't trigger nuclear response by default as he will hope to conquer it again later.
I'm so confused. So the endgame you would like is that Russia nukes Ukraine, but Ukraine keeps fighting Russia (who has nukes, and is willing to use them). Does this keep going until there is no Ukranian left to fight, at which point the US just sends drones to Ukraine to keep fighting? Are Ukranians more willing to die for their country than Japan was in 1945?
As I said in the comment above the perfect endgame is Putin no longer in power. But the price is artificially prolonging the conflict or increased nuclear risk in Ukraine. Which is why I said prolonging the conflict looks like a better option.
As for Ukrainians there are reasons to believe they're much more willing to die than Japanese in 1945. Anecdotes first. I asked a Ukrainian yesterday what should Ukraine do if nuked. She said obviously keep fighting. I know more than one person who donated significant amounts of money to the army. A vibe I'm getting from many is victory at any cost. Ironically once I had difficulty convincing one Ukrainian why NATO can't be more involved.
Polls say that only around 10% of Ukrainians think that Ukraine should hold peace talks with Russia. Even after conventional rocket showers 80+% say that Ukraine should keep fighting. Also Ukraine would in a different situation than Japan. If Putin orders a nuclear strike it would mean Ukraine is otherwise winning. So morale would be super-high among Ukrainians. Unlike losing Japan in 1945.
Another thing to consider is that the first use of nuclear weapons was a shock to everyone. Many Ukrainians understand the fact that they can be nuked. Though about 2/3 (according to another poll) still don't believe Russia is capable of actually ordering a nuclear strike.
If you think about it Mariupol could be even worse than a nuclear explosion. Tens of thousands dead but waiting for their fate for many weeks without much water and food, hiding from bombs, seeing familiar faces lying dead on the streets, constantly being in terror. This didn't stop Ukrainians.
There is a lesswrong post [LW · GW] that describes a subtle way Russia destroys lives of its own people. Ukrainians understand it too well now and some are just plainly saying that they would rather die than live under Russian rule.
Seeing a mushroom cloud can easily change public opinion but it's far from obvious that Ukraine would just give up.
So Putin "wins", and therefore decides to nuke Europe to celebrate?
Well, the obvious historical analogy is there. And if you plot size (by some appropriate metric) of the wars Putin was involved in so far my guess is there would be something resembling an exponential curve.
In December 2021 Putin openly demanded that NATO returns all former Soviet republics to Russia. The legalese was very thinly veiled (removing all NATO forces from those countries). The implied threat was "or else I invade Ukraine". NATO hadn't budged. Putin went on to invade Ukraine. If one takes Putin's words seriously one should treat this as an open declaration of his plans to get all former Soviet republics under his rule.
Replies from: mwacksen↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-11-04T13:04:30.229Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
As I said in the comment above the perfect endgame is Putin no longer in power.
Not it isn't, because there are alternatives that are worse than Putin. I hope there are alternatives to Putin that are both realistic and also better, but I haven't seen much evidence for this coming out of Russia.
As for Ukrainians there are reasons to believe they're much more willing to die than Japanese in 1945
Are you familiar with Japan pre 1945 at all? You have heard of kamikaze pilots at the very least, right? I will quote the Wikipedia article on them: "The tradition of death instead of defeat, capture, and shame was deeply entrenched in Japanese military culture; one of the primary values in the samurai life and the Bushido code was loyalty and honor until death". Unless your argument is "Ukraine and its leaders are a death cult", I'm going to respectfully ignore this point as "throwaway62... has no idea what they're talking about".
This didn't stop Ukrainians.
Yes it did. Unless you're living in a weird alternative history where Ukraine still controls Mariupol. Sure, Ukrainians in the West will wax poetic about how they will rather die than submit, but when push comes to shove one hopes that this kind of idiotic WWI-style nationalism will give way to cooler heads.
Ukrainians understand it too well now and some are just plainly saying that they would rather die than live under Russian rule.
the old lie: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
The legalese was very thinly veiled (removing all NATO forces from those countries).
You've made a number of very questionable claims in your comment, so I think I'll start winding down this conversation. Removing NATO forces from post-soviet countries is not "thinly veiled" legalese for returning Soviet republics to Russia, it's not even close.
one should treat this as an open declaration of his plans
Words have meanings: is it "thinly veiled", or is it "open"?
Replies from: throwaway62654↑ comment by throwaway62654 · 2022-11-05T21:22:27.771Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Unless you're living in a weird alternative history where Ukraine still controls Mariupol.
You just have to twist my words and make such an offensive response, don't you? To restate - the siege of Mariupol didn't stop Ukraine from defending Ukraine.
because there are alternatives that are worse than Putin
We're afraid he may start a nuclear war. That's pretty bad already. And he clearly gets worse with time. Yet you want to give him an opportunity to build a bigger army. To eventually give it to a successor who you think will be even worse.
the old lie: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
Actions speak. I know Ukrainians who were hiding from military enlistment officers for years in relatively peaceful years. I tried to give them advice how to hide from mobilization during the invasion. But they just stopped hiding.
You've made a number of very questionable claims in your comment
I shared both strong and weak evidence. I didn't initially think that it's gonna be a debate... If I treated this like a debate I could say something like: "Putin never said that he's gonna use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. On the contrary, he said he's not going to use nukes in Ukraine. Therefore there's nothing to worry about." But I'm not saying it.
Look, the point is Putin lied so many times about not being involved in Ukraine. He lied about not intending to start a full scale invasion. Any proposed solution that relies on him promising to not invade again has very low probability of working.
Replies from: mwacksen↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-11-06T09:40:25.864Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You just have to twist my words and make such an offensive response, don't you? To restate - the siege of Mariupol didn't stop Ukraine from defending Ukraine.
I don't see what's offensive, and I'm not twisting your words but pointing out something that's almost obvious: IF you have no chance of winning THEN you should stop fighting. This was true in Mariupol, and is true for the rest of Ukraine also. The siege of Mariupol absolutely stopped Ukraine from defending Mariupol. The important question is whether the IF applies. But once it does, throwing away human life just to make a point strikes me as somewhat nihilistic.
We're afraid he may start a nuclear war. That's pretty bad already.
Yes, is there anyone who could lead Russia of whom you would not be afraid that they'd start a nuclear war?
Yet you want to give him an opportunity to build a bigger army. To eventually give it to a successor who you think will be even worse.
No I don't "want" to "give" him anything, I'm just recognizing the realities of the situation, and noticing that what you're describing could happen with or without Putin.
Any proposed solution that relies on him promising to not invade again has very low probability of working.
I agree. But this doesn't mean that compromises can't be worked out, see e.g. the Black sea grain deal.
Replies from: mruwnik↑ comment by mruwnik · 2022-11-06T11:29:04.736Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Your if clause is somewhat of a false dichotomy. There are other reasons to keep fighting:
- you might be fighting a rear action that you know you won't win, but will allow the rest to escape
- you might be bogging down an enemies strength to keep them from going somewhere else
- you might be able to inflict enough damage on them to cause them to be ineffective in later battles
- you might want to inspire others
- you might care about glory
- you might have nowhere else to go
- you might just be nihilistic
- you might have someone pointing a gun at your back to stop you from retreating
Most of these boil down to iterated games, rather than just a one off prisoner's dilemma.
Mariupol is a tragedy. But it really didn't stop Ukrainians from continuing the fight as long as they could. The reason they stopped was because they ran out of supplies. They also inflicted massive damage on their enemy. There is a lesson here.
Stories of last stands are powerful. A large bunch of inspiring stories are about doomed last stands - Thermopylae, Beowulf, Roland's song, Westerplatte etc. We can argue about whether they were worth the suffering of the protagonists, whether it's morally good, etc., but they work.
Replies from: mwacksen↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-11-06T22:47:56.627Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yes, I agree, and my argument was an oversimplification. That said, I don't think you're properly considering its context. The context here is that if Ukraine were to be in a situation where it had no chance of winning the war (e.g. due to nuclear weapons being in play). Here is what I'm replying to:
As for Ukrainians there are reasons to believe they're much more willing to die than Japanese in 1945. Anecdotes first. I asked a Ukrainian yesterday what should Ukraine do if nuked. She said obviously keep fighting.
Many of your examples (1-3, arguably 4) apply to individual local events/battles, or are hard to apply as-is to this context (6, 8).
There is a lesson here.
The lesson is that even the defenders of Mariupol eventually decided to stop fighting rather than to die. And those defenders were highly motivated, patriotic/nationalistic soldiers. I would expect and hope that the threshold for "normal" citizens is lower.
whether it's morally good, etc., but they work.
Define "work". They may "work" for an individual battle, but they tautologically don't win the war. It's telling that almost all of your examples are fictional or have unreliable (ancient) sources. I've never heard of a last-stand involving an entire army, and even completely crazy countries (WW2 Japan, Germany) capitulate eventually when faced with overwhelming firepower. And nuclear weapons are overwhelming firepower.
Replies from: derpherpize↑ comment by Lao Mein (derpherpize) · 2022-11-07T06:46:20.789Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm not entirely convinced nukes are a "I win" button in this war. What if the Ukrainians take the nuclear threat seriously and disperse their civilian population? In that case, even full counter-value targeting of Ukraine with the full Russian atomic stockpile probably kills under a million people. I previously did an analysis of the tactical utility of nuclear weapons and came to the conclusion that they aren't as cost-effective as precision weapons. That, in fact, NATO is entirely capable of supplying so much precision weaponry to Ukraine that it does more damage to combat units than the entire Russian tactical nuclear stockpile combined. My best-guess scenario for Russia using all their tactical nuclear weapons is that, between poor target info and poor maintanance of the Russia atomic stockpile, they at most render the Ukrainian Army 50% combat ineffective. That still isn't enough to knock them out of the fight, and an influx of NATO weapons afterwards will stabilize the front.
Replies from: mwacksen↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-11-07T11:47:36.634Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I previously did an analysis of the tactical utility of nuclear weapons and came to the conclusion that they aren't as cost-effective as precision weapons.
We still live in a world where all use of nuclear weapons is strategic.
What if the Ukrainians take the nuclear threat seriously and disperse their civilian population?
So what? the point of Russia using nukes is to signal that it will do whatever it takes to defeat Ukraine. The tactical effects are beside the point. It's hard to predict what will happen exactly, but if a nuke gets used anywhere, there will be panic in every European city worse than the covid panic of 2020. The knock-on effects are debatable, but the ones that primarily affect this conflict will be the effects on the population in the West, who after all elect their leaders and therefore constrain them. I do not think there is an appetite for unlimited support of Ukraine, and I think the use of any nuke fundamentally changes the equation in a way that is very hard to predict. This is especially true if the nuke is used e.g. in the context of a nuclear test on Crimea.
But your discussion on tactical nukes misses an important point: Russia is so far not trying to exterminate Ukraine and its people. If it were willing to do so and use nukes, it could wreck havoc on Ukranian supply-chains and leadership in a way that goes for beyond "50% combat ineffective". Armies needs supplies, working logistics, etc. If someone is reckless enough to start using nuclear weapons, I don't think it's safe to assume they will be prudent enough only to use them on military targets.
Replies from: ChristianKl, derpherpize↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-07T14:50:35.121Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Biden's statement was that using a tactical nuke would just result in increased weapons deliveries and expanding the range of delivered weapons and not doing other retaliation.
That was an available move because the tactical utility of the weapons is very low. India in particular and likely also China, do care about no nukes getting detonated and Russia could lose their support for donating tactical nukes.
I do not think there is an appetite for unlimited support of Ukraine, and I think the use of any nuke fundamentally changes the equation in a way that is very hard to predict.
While there's no appetite for unlimited support, I think currently the biggest limit for support is cost. The Republicans who question support for Ukraine do it based on arguments about the cost of that support. If Russia detonates a tactical nuke, it becomes very hard for anyone to argue about cost, and the current opposition of part of the Republicans to support for Ukraine is essentially destroyed.
↑ comment by Lao Mein (derpherpize) · 2022-11-08T01:48:22.164Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm saying that Russia can't, in fact, "wreck havoc on Ukranian supply-chains and leadership" with nuclear weapons, at least not for long. Rails are made of hardened steel. Roads are made of asphalt. Neither can really be "knocked out" without being inside the fireball of a nuclear weapon. Russia can use its entire nuclear stockpile to seriously damage Ukrainian logistics for a while, but I don't think their command structure can really take advantage of that, based off their recent performance. And trucks can still drive off-road. With NATO supply lines, Ukraine can afford to lose a million trucks a month to mud, if that's what it takes to get supplies to the front. As for leadership, they can disperse as well. With Starlink, they are entirely capable of directing operations from a corn field in either Poland or Ukraine. The Ukrainian command structure is also specifically built to survive decapitation strikes and interdiction of communication. Both NATO and PACT forces had detailed plans for fighting a total war after a strategic nuclear exchange. On the battlefield, nuclear weapons aren't eschalogical, they're just another weapon.
Also, Russia can't exterminate the Ukrainian people with nuclear weapons, even if it uses its entire strategic stockpile there, especially if Ukraine disperses their population. It's a matter of math, not will. If the people aren't in cities, what is Russia going to target? A villiage of a few hundred with a strategic nuclear weapon? It'll run out long before making a big dent on Ukrainian demographics.
So let's say it's mid 2023, Ukraine is pushing the Russians, and Russia conducts a nuclear test in Crimea. Ukraine responds by pausing operations for a week and dispersing its population. Then continues to drive into Crimea. What does Russia do then? Tactical nukes might slow things down, but only until they run out. Strategic weapons may result in conventional NATO retalliation and again can only do so much. Nuclear weapons can't stop a dominant Ukrainian military if the political and military leadership stands firm, and based on what I've seen so far I think they will.
Replies from: mwacksen↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-11-08T21:30:30.898Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
especially if Ukraine disperses their population.
Something that sounds simple - "dispersing" your population - really comes with a huge cost. You can't just send your population into the fields and expect them to live there.
And trucks can still drive off-road.
For which they require gasoline.
With NATO supply lines, Ukraine can afford to lose a million trucks a month to mud
I don't think this is accurate, Nato doesn't just have a million trucks a month lying around somewhere to send.
If the people aren't in cities, what is Russia going to target?
I don't particularly enjoy playing this morbid game of guessing what Russia could do, but targeting things like dams, bridges, power-plants, and other infrastructure would do far more damage than you seem to acknowledge.
Then continues to drive into Crimea.
Do they drive through the water, or how does this work? I feel like your arguments prove to much. If Ukraine had it that easy, why haven't they taken even Kherson yet?
Replies from: derpherpize↑ comment by Lao Mein (derpherpize) · 2022-11-09T00:44:19.833Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Ukraine is recieving ~70% of its pre-war GDP in military aid alone. They've already sent much of their civilian population to the EU. If there's a serious nuclear threat, population dispersal is simply a continuation of existing policies. The Germans can pick up the tab if nothing happens.
There are millions of civilian trucks in Europe. Yes, attrition rate will be high if they are used in a military context, but if nukes get dropped there are bigger things to worry about.
Russia knocking out dams, bridges, and power-plants doesn't do much in the long-run. Sure, Ukrainian civilians won't be operating with power, and hospitals won't work, but those are small things in the context of nuclear war. The only major river in Ukraine is the Dnepier, and Russia is currently running a significant part of its supply lines through pontoons there right now. Nuking hospitals might kill a lot of people, but it doesn't do much for the war effort.
As for Crimea, we're talking about the context of Russia using nuclear weapons, which pre-supposes Ukraine being able to take Crimea. And I think they will, in time. Russia is currently only spending ~5% of its GDP on its military. Ukraine, when taking into account foreign military aid, is spending 90%+.
Replies from: ChristianKl, ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-09T09:20:58.820Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The Germans can pick up the tab if nothing happens.
We are at the point where German mainstream media is willing to write stories about how the people in Crimea are standing behind Putin. If you want to know where that media outlet is located on the political spectrum Wikipedia points out that it's partly owned by the SPD which is the main party in Germany's governing coalition.
Germany was never really willing to support Ukraine to retake Crimea. That's why Ukraine got so little German support pre-2022 invasion.
The idea that Germany is willing to just spend tens of billions to support Ukraine seems very unrealistic to me.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-09T08:50:25.086Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The Germans can pick up the tab if nothing happens.
If you look at German politics, I don't think it's that easy to just spend tens of billions in foreign aid.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-01T11:38:24.211Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Russia would call that bluff the moment it was made.
And it would be a strong signal that NATO promises are worth nothing, which is bad for the Baltic states.
↑ comment by Gunnar_Zarncke · 2022-10-31T18:19:52.894Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
You cite anecdotal evidence - which is valuable as such, but likely biased in some way. Can you indicate the number of sources and their socio-economic background?
Replies from: throwaway62654↑ comment by throwaway62654 · 2022-11-01T07:46:00.766Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Sure, it's biased. The point mostly was that my personal experience confirms the reasons why the polls cited in the original post are even more biased.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-29T11:17:47.845Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Since 2014 a lot of people left Crimea
The first Gallup poll I cited was from July 2014. Do you think that a lot of people left Crimea by then?
One doesn't have to be an expert to see which side caused more death. Mariupol. All war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine pale in comparison to an entire city leveled to the ground.
Leveling Mariupol to the ground is a war crime that's allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine. I first heard that claim from a Russian friend who sourced it through a relative of a friend who was on the ground. Russian media is also making the claim. It's unfortunate that EU censorship makes it harder to know that this is what Russian media is saying and thus to know what "war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine" involve.
Neither of the two makes me confident that Ukraine is responsible, but it certainly falls into the category of war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine.
I just don't see how the conclusion you're making follows from the statements you make in the post even if all of them are true.
If you agree that Crimea would not be peaceful under Ukrainian rule and in a state of constant violent conflict and you care about global security, having Crimea under Ukrainian rule is not good.
The idea that if Ukraine only manages to retake all its former territory that means it's safe from future attacks from Russia is faulty especially if there's a lot of resistance in Crimea to Ukrainian rule.
Nuclear risk and global security matter.
I think if you believe that the borders of Ukraine don't matter and what matters is nuclear risk, then it's useful to be able to make a peace deal that does not back Putin into a corner where using nuclear weapons is the only thing that might keep him in power.
Food prices are also a huge global security risk and having a peace deal sooner than later would be good on that front.
Replies from: Viliam, throwaway62654, i-b↑ comment by Viliam · 2022-10-29T16:33:12.454Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Leveling Mariupol to the ground is a war crime that's allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine.
This is the first time I heard anything like that, so I checked Wikipedia, and the Russian page says:
В 2022 году в ходе российского вторжения город был оккупирован вооружёнными силами России и самопровозглашённой ДНР после продолжительной блокады и обстрела российскими войсками, в результате чего, по оценкам ООН, в городе были повреждены или разрушены до 90 % жилых зданий и до 60 % частных домов.
In 2022, during the Russian invasion, the city was occupied by Russian armed forces and the self-proclaimed DNR after a lengthy blockade and shelling by Russian troops, which, according to UN estimates, damaged or destroyed up to 90 percent of residential buildings and up to 60 percent of private homes in the city.
So, seems like the editors of Russian Wikipedia haven't heard about it either.
(My Russian is not fluent enough to check the entire talk page carefully, but skimming the text did not reveal any edit war about who actually destroyed Mariupol. I am saying this because even where Wikipedia editors are biased, one can usually find the accusations of bias on the talk page.)
Replies from: Tapatakt, ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-29T17:52:21.581Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There's an RT article that makes the claim. I'm unsure about whether it's wise to currently link directly to RT, especially when posting censorship-circumventing links.
Replies from: Viliam↑ comment by Viliam · 2022-10-29T19:09:13.088Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Quoting RT is a bit like quoting QAnon. If there is not even another Russian source that would confirm the information, I think it is quite safe to assume that it was made up.
For those unfamiliar, watch this. (Yay, European censorship trivially circumvented.)
Replies from: Gunnar_Zarncke↑ comment by Gunnar_Zarncke · 2022-10-31T17:05:54.898Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Christian is not saying that RT is reliable, only that we can't trust either side. Only if both sides report something or if there is independent reporting - but where will you find that? I wouldn't trust Wikipedia on this either - who knows what filtering/blocking of accounts goes on.
Replies from: Viliam↑ comment by Viliam · 2022-10-31T17:28:40.488Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
My argument is that if some pro-Russian information is not even supported by mainstream Russian media (which are fully under Putin's control), but only by RT, we can falsely assume that it is a lie.
Please do not "both sides" at me when one of those sides is RT. Note that I am not saying "Russia" here, but "RT" specifically. Using RT as an argument for... anything... is just silly.
Sorry, I am running out of patience here. Using RT in a discussion is exactly the same level of insanity as using QAnon. If RT merely repeats statements made by someone else, please use the original source. If RT is the original, then please let's just not discuss that at a wannabe rationalist site at all.
With regards to Wikipedia, I do not trust the articles, but I trust that if a controversy exists, it will appear on the talk page. (At least in form of: "A suggests X" "B suggests to ban A; A is banned".)
Replies from: ChristianKl, Gunnar_Zarncke↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-31T19:53:01.313Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If RT merely repeats statements made by someone else, please use the original source.
Are you actually reading what I write? This has nothing to do with what I said. I have two independent sources, not one source repeating what another source says. Neither of the two nor them together is enough for me to be confident that the claim is true.
I did refer to both sources. The other is an eye-witness report (with two people in between) and not a media report. Given that I noted that in the first post, it feels strange to me that you assert I somehow only referred to RT.
If RT makes a claim then that claim is a claim that's alleged. Then it's a set of the "all war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine" that throwaway62654 talked about. You can talk about how important that set happens to be but if you want to make arguments about its nature, then to me this clearly falls into that set.
mainstream Russian media
Unfortunately, I don't know any Russian, so I can't check what mainstream Russian media says about Mariupol.
↑ comment by Gunnar_Zarncke · 2022-10-31T18:16:24.850Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm not saying "both sides" here. I see Russia as the much worse aggressor. It seems clear that Putin used the real but very weak Nazi accusations to expand his energy empire. But we have only very weak evidence of what goes on in the war zone unless both sides agree on some aspect.
My argument is that if some pro-Russian information is not even supported by mainstream Russian media (which are fully under Putin's control), but only by RT, we can falsely assume that it is a lie.
Agree.
I understand Christian's point as primarily about stopping the war to help people on the ground - with all the difficulties that brings - many might not want to be "liberated" . Cheering Ukraine isn't helping that cause.
Replies from: Taran, ChristianKl↑ comment by Taran · 2022-11-01T07:39:39.733Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
But we have only very weak evidence of what goes on in the war zone unless both sides agree on some aspect.
I know we're in a hostile information space, but this takes epistemic learned helplessness way too far. There are lots of ways to find things out other than being told about them, and when you don't have specific knowledge about something you don't have to adopt a uniform prior.
Taking Mariupol as an example, our two suspects are the Russians, who were attacking Mariupol and didn't have any assets there, and the Ukrainians, who were defending Mariupol and did. Given those facts, before we hear from either side, what should we expect? If you're unsure, we can look at other events in similar reference classes. For example, of the German towns destroyed during World War 2, how many would you predict were destroyed by Allied attackers, and how many by German defenders?
Replies from: Teerth Aloke, ChristianKl↑ comment by Teerth Aloke · 2022-11-01T12:56:49.505Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Ever heard of scorched earth?
Replies from: Taran↑ comment by Taran · 2022-11-01T18:33:00.190Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Usually that's just about denying strategic assets, though: blowing up railroads, collapsing mine shafts, that sort of thing. Blowing up the museums and opera houses is pointless, because the enemy can't get any war benefit by capturing them. All it does is waste your own explosives, which you'd rather use to blow up the enemy. Scorched earth practiced by attackers, on the other hand, tends to be more indiscriminate: contrast the state of Novgorod post-WW2 with that of the towns west of it, or the treatment of rice fields by North Vietnamese vs. Americans during the Vietnam war.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-01T13:19:57.794Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The Wikipedia number for Mariupol's ethnic Russian population is 44%. Russia certainly had the intention to make Mariupol Russian territory. Making Mariupol Russian territory is worth more if it stays standing. Russia has to invest less money into rebuilding Mariupol if it's not destroyed.
The inability of the Russian army was not as apparent at the time Mariupol was taken as it's now, so it's quite plausible that Ukrainians didn't expect to be able to retake it at the time.
World War II was not a far fought to take over German territory, so it's not in the same reference class. That's especially true because of lessons from World War I, that the German population might have to see part of Germany being destroyed to really understand that they lost.
Replies from: Taran↑ comment by Taran · 2022-11-01T18:37:32.815Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm a little curious what reference class you think the battle of Mariupol does belong to, which makes its destruction by its defenders plausible on priors. But mostly it sounds like you agree that we can make inferences about hard questions even without a trustworthy authority to appeal to, and that's the point I was really interested in.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-01T19:33:16.645Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The reference class would be "wars to extend a country's territory permanently". As such there's an interest to have the value of the newly won territory as high as possible.
When waging war over a city, for both sides there are actions that can be taken to increase or decrease the amount of damage that the city takes.
In Ukraine, it seems that no party went out of its way to reduce the damage to cities. We know that from Amnesty trying to understand what happened and them finding that frequently Ukrainian army stationed itself inside the city and got shot at by the Russian army.
This dynamic does explain that a part of the city is destroyed but it doesn't explain why 90% of Mariupol's residential buildings had been damaged or destroyed (Wikipedia numbers). The 90% sounds to me like this is more than just collateral damage but that someone made a conscious choice to destroy more of the city than they would need for purely military reasons.
One reason to do that might be propaganda reasons and to make the population fear you. Given that according to Russian propaganda Russia came to liberate the Russian minority, destroying a city with a large number of ethnic Russians makes little sense for that goal.
Often in war destruction is also done as a punishment. Russia punished the population in Chechnya for their local resistance in the Second Chechnyan War. It's unclear to me why the population of Mariupol would deserve to be punished from the Russian perspective.
On the other hand, at the time that Mariupol was taking Ukrainians might have thought that this war will end in a way where Donetsk and Luhansk would permanently be part of Russia. Under that assumption making Mariupol worth as little as possible seems to me like an understandable reason.
Reporting suggests that taking Crimea was expensive for Russia. Having Mariupol destroyed means Russia would have to invest more money into it to make it function again after the war.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-01T00:05:22.436Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I agree that ending the war sooner rather than later is politically the most important priority.
↑ comment by throwaway62654 · 2022-10-30T06:22:27.024Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The idea that if Ukraine only manages to retake all its former territory that means it's safe from future attacks from Russia is faulty especially if there's a lot of resistance in Crimea to Ukrainian rule.
The idea that if Ukraine make a peace deal with Russia means it's safe from future attacks from Russia is even more faulty. In fact Ukraine made a peace deal with Russia in 2015. And I'm not even talking about Budapest Memorandum.
I think if you believe that the borders of Ukraine don't matter and what matters is nuclear risk, then it's useful to be able to make a peace deal that does not back Putin into a corner where using nuclear weapons is the only thing that might keep him in power.
Borders don't matter in and of themselves. But they matter to Putin. Somewhat. Therefore they can be used as a tool to prevent him from being encouraged to continue his conquest.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-30T15:04:08.730Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
In fact Ukraine made a peace deal with Russia in 2015.
They didn't. They made a ceasefire agreement. Then they wanted to pass laws to do what the ceasefire agreement calls for and then there was the episode with the grenade in front of the Ukrainian parliament and they didn't pass laws.
Therefore they can be used as a tool to prevent him from being encouraged to continue his conquest.
Taking territory against the will of the local population is hard and painful as the Soviets learned in Afghanistan and the US in Iraq and Afghanistan as well. This whole episode should be good in showing that the Russian army is not capable of doing that.
Reducing the amount of territory that could be taken with the support of the local population discourages conquest.
The idea that Putin would just accept Crimea as being Ukrainian without planning another attack to take it back seems strange to me.
Replies from: throwaway62654↑ comment by throwaway62654 · 2022-11-01T07:31:46.317Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The idea that Putin would just accept Crimea as being Ukrainian without planning another attack to take it back seems strange to me.
He won't. I don't even know if retaking Crimea is a wise strategy. Ukrainian military may well decide to not proceed to Crimea because of nuclear risk. My point was that any attempt at peace without Putin giving up something of value would play directly into his hands.
↑ comment by I B (i-b) · 2022-10-30T09:12:10.897Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Leveling Mariupol to the ground is a war crime that's allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine
So, Do you think after Russians had encircled the city Ukrainians somehow were able to destroy it? :)
P.S.: It is so shocking to see such statements in LW that I even registered here after 10 years of read-only.
↑ comment by I B (i-b) · 2023-07-02T23:42:07.767Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
@ChristianKl [LW · GW] So, how are things with crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine? This one is from Wagner's channel.
https://t.me/grey_zone/19363
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2023-07-03T00:38:47.717Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
That paragraph looks to me to be about how they handled civilians on the battlefield and is not about the number of destroyed homes in Mariupol.
It does not really answer "Why are there so many destroyed homes in Mariupol?"
Replies from: i-b↑ comment by I B (i-b) · 2023-07-03T15:15:59.359Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The paragraph explicitly states 1) Russian aviation and TOS-1 Buratino targeted residential areas with bombings.. 2) Russian commanders prioritized capturing the city swiftly, disregarding the safety of civilians. 3) Russian commanders provided false information to their subordinates regarding the presence of civilians in residential areas.
You can get some insight into the situation from the text, I believe. It's just one data point but there are countless evidence like that provided by Russians themselves. And nothing that kind of magnitude from Ukrainian sources.
But ofc you can not really answer "Why are there so many destroyed homes in Mariupol?". Each side should provide a spreadsheet indicating the number of houses destroyed with video confirmations to really answer the question :)
Well, I think I have nothing to say anymore. Have a good day!
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-30T14:24:30.434Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm able to separate out claims made where I know they are alleged from other claims where I have a strong belief that they are true.
In this instance, the claim is that Ukrainians destroyed it before that point.
Replies from: Ape in the coat, i-b↑ comment by Ape in the coat · 2022-10-31T08:29:19.659Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm able to separate out claims made where I know they are alleged from other claims where I have a strong belief that they are true
When you have only these two mental boxes for claims you can't distinct between 60% probable alleged claims and 10% probable alleged claims. Or maybe even 1% probable alleged claims, you are citing RT, after all.
This is an easily exploitable position. Coincidently, the one that Russian state is optimized to manipulate very well by throwing lots of completely unevidenced claims and talking about them as facts, so that reasonable people put them in the alleged category.
Russian media is extremely untrustworthy. If you think that of course it is, after all Western media is untrustworthy as well - you have no idea. The Russian media and Western media are in two completely different reference classes of untrustworthiness. My best example is your outgroup network, but completely unrestrained with even a resemblence of memetic competetion with your ingroup network. There is no insentive to be correlated with facts at all moreover there is an insentive not to be.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-31T10:52:29.683Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
When you have only these two mental boxes for claims you can't distinct between 60% probable alleged claims and 10% probable alleged claims. Or maybe even 1% probable alleged claims, you are citing RT, after all.
Who said that I have only two mental boxes? I responded to a statement about what "alleged claims" happen to be. I wouldn't have brought this up if we wouldn't have talked about what claims are alleged.
While I'm referring to RT, my process was "friend makes a claim, that's sourced independently of RT and not to any Russian media outlet but to people on the ground" -> search additional sources to see whether that's actually what the Russian position is.
I didn't cite any Russian media in my main post. In the comments, I once referred to https://khpg.org/ for a translation but not for other factual claims because it might be a too Russian-leaning source.
I only referred to Russian media when discussing what claims are alleged.
Replies from: Ape in the coat, mruwnik↑ comment by Ape in the coat · 2022-11-01T08:47:45.159Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Here you are talking about separating claims in these two mental categories.
I'm able to separate out claims made where I know they are alleged from other claims where I have a strong belief that they are true.
Also you acted as if at the moment you were indeed using only two of them.
You brought up Ukrainians war crimes in the post, crediting respectful sources as Amnesty International. Than throwaway62654 [LW · GW] replied that even if it was true it is tiny compared to credible Russian crimes like destroying Mariupol. Till this moment the mental box "alledged Ukrainian crimes" include only those who came from reasonable sources which are somewhat correlated with the truth. You reply with
Leveling Mariupol to the ground is a war crime that's allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine.
Thus putting a very improbable crime into the mental box. What used to be "alleged crimes according to Amnesty International" is now "alleged crimes according to Amnesty International and Russian state media", which isn't a helpful category anymore, but exactly the kind of mental category Russian propaganda machine wants people to have.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-01T11:35:47.571Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't think of the crimes that are well-documented by Amnesty International as alleged crimes but as well-documented crimes. That's the mental category in which they are for me. As Viliam explained in detail, those are claims by a source with left-wing London values and not one with pro-Russian values.
It feels very strange to see the set as alleged crimes, as only those alleged by Western sources and not count allegations by non-Western sources.
↑ comment by mruwnik · 2022-10-31T12:05:24.259Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The problem seems to be that this wasn't clear from your original comment. I admit that after reading it I was under the impression that you were giving at least some credence to the claim that the Ukrainians turned Mariupol into Grozny 2.0. Though rereading it now, I see that my impression was coloured by your other comments - I interpreted it as "no one can tell what really went down, seeing as both sides are blaming each other" rather than "it's worth knowing what both sides of an argument are saying if you want to come to a compromise".
This is a pity, since while I don't agree with you on (my understanding of) your stance on the war and how to best end it, you raise important points which should definitely be considered.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-31T13:39:29.987Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The problem seems to be that this wasn't clear from your original comment.
I'm not sure what you think "allegedly perpetrated" is supposed to mean when it's not about who alleges things when I respond to a comment that's about what's alleged.
"no one can tell what really went down, seeing as both sides are blaming each other"
I do think that it's pretty hard to know anything about what happens on the ground in a warzone in real time. I do believe that it's useful to be generally skeptical of one's knowledge. People are generally biased to be overconfident when thinking about politics and that's especially true in times of war.
I don't think claims from either side should make one confident of what happened. Independent claims like those from Amnesty or the UN human rights council are better. Currently, Amnesty seems to give Russia the blame for bombing a theatre with a lot of civilians in it but doesn't make claims about the responsibility for leveling a lot of civilian buildings to the ground.
↑ comment by I B (i-b) · 2022-10-30T16:10:15.438Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Then why are you spreading unconfirmed claims? That is not nice.
The city was encircled by Russians on 1st March. Could you explain me how and why AFU destroyed half-million city just in one week? :)
If you're really honest here do at least some fact-checking.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-30T16:30:51.211Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
throwaway62654 was talking about "war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine". I made a statement about what crimes have been alleged.
It's useful to be able to discuss what has been alledged and what has not been alleged.
Replies from: i-b↑ comment by I B (i-b) · 2022-10-31T15:47:03.655Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
throwaway62654 stated that Russians destroyed Mariupol.
One doesn't have to be an expert to see which side caused more death. Mariupol. All war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine pale in comparison to an entire city leveled to the ground. While people were still there.
You opposed and made the statement about possible involvement of Ukrainians.
Leveling Mariupol to the ground is a war crime that's allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine. I first heard that claim from a Russian friend who sourced it through a relative of a friend who was on the ground. Russian media is also making the claim. It's unfortunate that EU censorship makes it harder to know that this is what Russian media is saying and thus to know what "war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine" involve.
Neither of the two makes me confident that Ukraine is responsible, but it certainly falls into the category of war crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukraine.
According to Russian sources all the war crimes are done by Ukrainians. Does it make Ukraine a subject to praesumptio culpae? Is it a reasonable framing? Should we from the beginning include Ukraine into that category? Should Ukraine always prove that it didn't do all the horrible things while being invaded?
I can write an article that Mariupol was allegedly destroyed by North Korea (sorry for using absurdity). Will you include North Korea to the list of possible actors? Will it be useful? If not than what is the difference?
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-31T16:08:09.986Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Should Ukraine always prove that it didn't do all
thehorrible things while being invaded?
I don't think anybody in this discussion is operating with the authority of the Ukrainian government, so this is a quite strange claim. I'm not calling on the Ukrainians to prove anything anywhere in this post.
I'm able to distinguish my epistemics from claims for what people should do and don't mix that together. We are arguing here on a rationality forum and it's helpful for rational reasoning to be able to think clearly about what's true.
Replies from: i-b↑ comment by I B (i-b) · 2022-10-31T16:33:35.642Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm not calling on the Ukrainians to prove anything anywhere in this post.
Yeah but by assuming things (directly or not) you are framing the discussion in a way which significantly influences perception of the topic.
I'm able to distinguish my epistemics from claims for what people should do and don't mix that together. We are arguing here on a rationality forum and it's helpful for rational reasoning to be able to think clearly about what's true.
I can substitute should with is it rational if it drives the point home better :)
Or I can expand shoulds to should we dilute our attention and efforts with statements which are most certainly false to find the truth.
Anyway I see we are kinda stuck here and I have nothing more to add.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-31T17:51:27.210Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I can substitute should with is it rational if it drives the point home better :)
It's rational for Ukraine to engage in war propaganda that's not always true. That's generally what most countries do when they are at war.
Replies from: i-b↑ comment by I B (i-b) · 2022-10-31T19:11:28.578Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'd like to object that it's rational. Sooner or later any lie will be revealed and the reputation/trust will be lost irrevocably. Without trust Ukraine will lose external and internal support and then the war. The risks are just not worth it.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-31T19:36:19.819Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It would be great if war propaganda lies would lead to irrevocably lost trust, but in most cases that's not what happens. Most people excuse lies from people they consider to be on their side in war.
In any case, at the start of this war, we had false propaganda stories like the Ghost of Kyiv. They didn't choose the strategy of not telling any lies and I'm not aware of any army doing that during a war.
Replies from: i-b↑ comment by I B (i-b) · 2022-10-31T20:08:34.806Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yes, they didn't. And I think the story about the Ghost of Kyiv is net negative. But not all propaganda is equal. One thing is to lie about a mythic mighty pilot to comfort people (which is still bad imo) and completely other thing is to say that Ukrainians destroyed Mariupol, killed people in Bucha or spend millions to vilify Ukraine and poison EU in information space.
https://www.civic-synergy.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Words-and-Wars.-Ukraine-Facing-Kremlin-Propaganda.pdf
comment by bokov (bokov-1) · 2022-10-28T21:48:35.575Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This is basically a false equivalence "there are good/bad people on both sides" type of argument.
If some other country sent troops inside Russia's borders and held a referendum for whether or not the regions they occupied want to be annexed, I would consider Russia to be the victim no matter how screwed up its internal politics are. Furthermore, such a referendum would not be legitimate no matter how honestly executed it is because the presence of foreign troops and displacement of civilians already hopelessly biases the outcome.
For the same reason, until there are no more Russian soldiers inside of Ukraine's pre-2014 borders, I see no reason to treat these referenda and complicated stories about some Ukrainians someplace being Nazis as anything other than Russian propaganda, albeit you deserve praise for well crafted propaganda delivered in a civil manner.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-28T23:58:46.125Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There always were Russian troops within Ukraine. There was no change from no Russian troops to Russian troops.
A country that got invited by the Ukrainian president to do so if you don't consider a coup to be a legitimate change of government. The Crimeans also invited them.
But generally, I don't care about countries. I don't think that countries are relevant moral patients. I care about people. This post is about Crimeans as moral patients.
I see no reason to treat these referenda and complicated stories about some Ukrainians someplace being Nazis as anything other than Russian propaganda
Why? Because the propaganda of your side wants you to believe it?
Do you think that human rights organizations are inherently untrustworthy?
What epistemic process are you following here?
Replies from: Viliam↑ comment by Viliam · 2022-10-29T15:17:21.546Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Do you think that human rights organizations are inherently untrustworthy?
Speaking as a former activist of Amnesty International, they certainly have their biases. I do not want to generalize from one example, so the following is specifically about Amnesty, which you have linked in the article; other human rights organizations may work differently.
Amnesty perceives itself as an organization that values things such as neutrality and non-violence. Let's focus on neutrality, as it is relevant here. In practice, this is achieved in two ways. First, Amnesty has offices in many countries all over the world. When a situation in some country is evaluated, Amnesty members from that specific country are excluded from the debate. For example, in the annual Amnesty International report, the chapter about e.g. Germany was (in theory) written in collaboration of all Amnesty International branches, except for the Germany branch. Same for other countries. One reason is that it is assumed that people living in that country would be most partial about what happens there. Another reason is that this supposedly protects the lives of Amnesty members in various countries, because if some dictatorship is angry about the report, they know that the local members have not contributed there, so it reduces the motive to simply go and kill the local members, or maybe torture them until they write an updated report.
In theory, this works great. In practice, the "collaboration of all countries except the one concerned" often means that the central in London makes the decisions, and everyone else accepts them as the international consensus of Amnesty International. By the way, the central in London has an exception from the impartiality rule; they are allowed to also comment on things happening in their own country. Thus, a cynical person might conclude that this reduces entirely to people in London making all the decisions, and the other branches just communicating them to local public.
Another problem is that local members sometimes feel that London, ahem, the international consensus got some important facts wrong, because they miss the local knowledge. This concern is usually dismissed as (using a LessWrong expression here) "this is what being biased feels from inside". And who knows, maybe this is exactly it.
The second way the neutrality is practiced, is that you are supposed to list the crimes of both sides; that is, as long as they are state actors, or an equivalent. (That means, Amnesty does not concern itself by ordinary crime; only by crimes committed by governments, or by de facto governments, or wannabe governments, or various political groups.) On one hand, yes, if you criticize the bad actions of one side, it is fair to also mention the bad actions of the other side, otherwise you are writing propaganda instead of an impartial report. The problem is what you do if both sides do bad things, but the difference between them is an order of magnitude. Ultimately, you have a limited space on paper, so you list the 5 worst crimes of the side X, and 5 worst crimes of the side Y, which sometimes gives a "arson, murder, and jaywalking" vibe. Also, an unsophisticated reader is likely to conclude "5 crimes vs 5 crimes, both sides are equally bad". When that happens, Amnesty members get offended and insist that this is absolutely not what they meant. But the fact that this misunderstanding happens all the time suggests that Amnesty should somewhat improve its communication skills.
Another problem is the different treatment of political vs non-political groups. Suppose there is a problematic group, which is horribly oppressed by the government. If the problematic group is classified as political, Amnesty will produce a "both sides" report, listing both the oppression by the government, and the bad actions done by the group. But if the group is non-political, Amnesty will produce a "one side" report, where only the government oppression is listed; it is a taboo to comment on the group's misdeeds. So if you have a gray area, like an organization that describes itself as non-political but actually does a lot of political activity, Amnesty could generate two dramatically different reports based on how it decides to classify this group.
Oh, lest I forget, Amnesty calls itself politically neutral, but I would be surprised if fewer than 90% of its members were left-wing, at least in London. If you ask random members about this, they will most likely see no problem and tell you something like "everyone is free to join, and it is not our fault that only left-wing people care about human rights". (Which ignores the fact that the definition of "human rights" is interpreted to exclude the things mostly right-wing people care about these days, such as free speech.)
*
Let's look on the "Ukrainian fighting tactics endanger civilians" report from this perspective. I believe that the facts mentioned there are true. So the debate is mostly about proportionality: if you report on Ukrainian army staying dangerously close to the civilian buildings, should you use the same font size / same article length / give it the same visibility, as when you talk e.g. about Bucha?
And if subsequently pro-Russian people worldwide joyfully share this article saying: "see? both sides are equally bad, even Amnesty International says so", is it really Amnesty's fault? On one hand, this was totally predictable. On the other hand, this is how Amnesty communicates all the time, so why should they make an exception for Ukraine?
As I see it, this is basically an "all lives matter" kind of situation. Yes, literally true, but also completely tone deaf.
The report was most likely written in London, most likely by Agnès Callamard, the General Secretary of Amnesty, who is also quoted twice in the article. In reaction, the chief of Ukraine branch of Amnesty has resigned; Amnesty regrets the pain caused by the article but fully stands by the findings (link). The former chief of the Ukrainian branch further explains:
International Humanitarian Law does not impose a blanket prohibition on establishing military bases in proximity to civilian infrastructure. Instead, the military should, to the maximum extent possible, avoid locating military objectives near populated areas and should seek to protect civilians from the dangers resulting from military operations. This warrants an assessment of each situation on a case-by-case basis, not just from a legal perspective, but also in terms of the military realities on the ground.
The reality of the war in Ukraine is that Russian forces are seeking to occupy towns and cities in Ukraine, and Ukraine’s armed forces are trying to prevent that. Given the widely publicized accounts of Russian atrocities against civilians in Bucha and Irpin, it is not immediately evident that by withdrawing from populated areas, the Ukrainian military would have achieved the maximum possible protection of civilians.
Sorry for long rant, but you keep posting that link.
EDIT:
By the way, Agnès Callamard actually believes that Ukraine is the good guy here. (Took me some time to figure out her actual opinions.) It's just the hard-to-understand communication standard of Amnesty International, as usual. Here is what she said at a different opportunity (video, after 38 min):
Even though the scale of the violations committed by Ukraine is not comparable to what Russia is doing at the moment, based at least on what we know, it does not mean that Ukraine should evade its responsibilities for any war crimes that it may have committed or will commit. [...] Russia's aggression is unprecedented for the last 15 years [...] We need to begin by tackling aggression in a much more forceful fashion than had been done so far.
comment by mwacksen · 2022-10-29T10:49:10.620Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
In the Nüremberg trials, we decided that one aspect of our global democratic culture is that those who engaged in the Holocaust and mass murdered Jews and other groups were war criminals even if their excuse was that they followed orders.
While I agree with the conclusion, I really do vehemently object to the framing. Who is "we", and what on earth is "global democratic culture"?
Attempts to rewrite history and glorify fascists go both against our general Western consensus
I mean these are two separate things, and depending on who you ask rewriting history is what the West is pretty good at. But again, what "Western consensus"? Depending on who you ask, either Russia or the West is massively "rewriting history" regarding Ukraine.
Stepan Bandera was at a time a leader of the faction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists in Kyiv where Ukrainian nationalists together with German death squads committed pogroms.
If I'm not mistaken, Bandera was interned at a German concentration camp when the atrocities took place. Which is quite a major detail, "our Western consensus" generally considers people innocent by default.
From my German perspective, where we consider the Holocaust as one of the worst episodes of the 20th century, declaring people who participated in the Holocaust to be national heroes who shall not be criticized feels deeply wrong
Ah, a German perspective, this somehow fits in very well with the extreme focus on nazis and/or nazi symbols as a kind of axiom from which everything else is derived. Here's an anecdote: I was friends with an Ukranian, who once wore a stylized swaztika necklace. Was she a Nazi? She was adamant that she was not. Turns out she just liked the pattern, had seen it being used in India, and didn't treat it as anathema the way a German would. The take that symbols that were used by nazis aren't proof of evil is an underrated one (especially in Germany). It's your actions that define you, not which symbols or Russell conjugation you use (or don't use) when talking about them ("I am a patriot, he is a nationalist, they are a government with a democratic mandate to put their population first").
That said: nationalism really is a problem in Ukraine at the moment. But I'm more worried about the kind of nationalism the West tends to support (making sure everyone says "Kharkiv" instead of "Kharkov", calling Russian soldiers "orcs", insisting that Crimea "is" Ukranian), rather than the "using Nazi symbols sometimes" form.
Right-wing ethnonationalism seems to me the best explanation for Ukrainians needlessly creating both internal conflicts that alienate internal minorities and conflicts with Europeans, at a time when Ukraine wants European support.
Unfortunately I don't think this harms their European support much - these are all things that are far in the past, and haven't stopped the EU waxing poetic about how Ukraine is fundamentally one of them. In fact, since in Ukraine, nationalism = against Russia, and "against Russia" is popular in Eastern Europe (for obvious reasons), the nationalist aspects may even find them support from the West. That said, it's just morally a bad policy, and absolutely affects how Ukraine is seen by Russia.
If we believe that Russia might have manipulated the counting of the referendum, the straightforward way to get a sense of what the Crimeans think is to look at polling data.
Unfortunately not, people who don't want to be in Crimea will have left, and polls aren't always reliable.
When pollsters asked again in 2017 in Crimea, 86% of non-Crimean Tatars say they would expect the same result in a repeat referendum
The non-Crimeans Tatars are somewhat irrelevant here given that most are Russian.
Punishing Crimeans for voting for the annexation feels morally wrong to me
There's a strong case that punishing Syrians for being ruled by Assad might just feel morally wrong too, but who am I to argue with a moral authority like the "Western consensus".
The fight of Ukraine against Russia is not one with clear lines between good and evil
Thank you for the great post on the clusterf*ck that is Ukraine and Ukrainian politics. Really this is a great case of a situation where it isn't clear what is actually going on given the rather one-sided reporting on both sides.
Crimeans deserve [..] a peace agreement [...] that respects the referendum of 2014
No they don't. The "referendum" of 2014 was a joke. Nobody needs to respect this joke.
Replies from: Viliam, ChristianKl↑ comment by Viliam · 2022-10-29T16:42:36.377Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If I'm not mistaken, Bandera was interned at a German concentration camp when the atrocities took place.
There were two Lviv pogroms soon after each other, from 30 June to 2 July, and from 25 to 29 July, 1941.
Bandera was arrested on 5 July 1941. So he probably was responsible for the first one.
EDIT:
Seems like he was out of Ukraine even during the first one.
Replies from: mwacksen↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-10-30T07:41:44.770Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It seems somewhat more complex, according to this link "Bandera was in occupied Poland when on June 30, 1941, his comrades proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state in Nazi-occupied Lviv — and the Germans banned him from traveling to Ukraine."
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-29T22:25:03.677Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
If I'm not mistaken, Bandera was interned at a German concentration camp when the atrocities took place.
Bandera was in prison when the atrocities in 1943 took place but not when those in 1941 took place.
The non-Crimeans Tatars are somewhat irrelevant here given that most are Russian.
It was also the case before 2014 that the majority in Crimea was Russian and there were a lot fewer Crimean Tatars.
But even if you want to ignore the Russians the poll also separates out self-identfying Ukrainans and a majority of them were also in support of the referendum.
Unfortunately I don't think this harms their European support much - these are all things that are far in the past, and haven't stopped the EU waxing poetic about how Ukraine is fundamentally one of them.
It was a reason why Ukraine got less military support from the EU before the invasion in 2022 than it wanted.
Ukraine still wants to be in the EU. The EU works in a way where every member state has a veto. Hungary has an easy time justifying that veto as long as Ukraine's law is not really compatible with EU law regarding minority protections.
There are probably also a lot of others who at the European institutional level think "We already have enough problems with Polish and Hungarian nationalists, do we really want to deal with Ukrainian nationalists as well?"
Replies from: mwacksen↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-10-30T07:50:59.376Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Bandera was in prison when the atrocities in 1943 took place but not when those in 1941 took place.
First of all, thanks for catching this, I was mistaken. That said, it seems somewhat more complex, according to this link "Bandera was in occupied Poland when on June 30, 1941, his comrades proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state in Nazi-occupied Lviv — and the Germans banned him from traveling to Ukraine."
This doesn't, of course, vindicate him in any way - he was head of an organisation that performed atrocities and worked with Nazi Germany. But it also doesn't make him guilty of said atrocities.
It was also the case before 2014 that the majority in Crimea was Russian and there were a lot fewer Crimean Tatars.
I'm loosely familiar with the history of Crimea, my point is that non-Crimean Tartars (many of who live, and have always lived in Russia) are irrelevant to Crimea. But maybe I'm misunderstanding things, and you mean "non-Crimean" Tartars who happen to live in Crimea?
But even if you want to ignore the Russians the poll also separates out self-identfying Ukrainans and a majority of them were also in support of the referendum.
So what? It's a feature, not a bug, of the modern system of states that not everybody who wants a referendum to secede gets one.
It was a reason why Ukraine got less military support from the EU before the invasion in 2022 than it wanted.
The reason Ukraine got less military support from the EU than it wanted was primarily so as not to antogonize Russia, as far as I can tell.
There are probably also a lot of others who at the European institutional level think "We already have enough problems with Polish and Hungarian nationalists, do we really want to deal with Ukrainian nationalists as well?"
Yes, hence Scholz's ridiculous pivot away from unanimity in the EU in Prague recently.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-30T14:43:55.428Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I'm loosely familiar with the history of Crimea, my point is that non-Crimean Tartars (many of who live, and have always lived in Russia) are irrelevant to Crimea. But maybe I'm misunderstanding things, and you mean "non-Crimean" Tartars who happen to live in Crimea?
I did link to the article of the poll that's the source for the claims. The poll asked a bunch of different questions, if you are interested in understanding what Crimean think at that time, it's worthwhile to read it.
I did refer to people who identify as either Ukrainian or Russian and not as Crimean Tartar when I said non-Crimean Tartar. So non-'Crimean Tartar'.
Replies from: mwacksencomment by Viliam · 2022-10-28T21:26:26.350Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I agree with exposing Ukraine's dirty laundry, but find it mildly ironic that Ukraine is simultaneously criticized for using Nazi symbols, and for demolition of Communist monuments.
From my perspective, Nazis and Commies are like twin brothers, so I find it amusing that using the symbols of the former is a pretext for invasion, but removing the monuments of the latter is wrong because Russians like them. Among the atrocities on the territory of Ukraine, perhaps we could also mention Holodomor. Is it so wrong for those whose grandparents survived Holodomor to remove the monuments of those who organized it?
Fuck Nazis; and Ukraine needs to have a serious discussion about its dark past (in a context different from "...and therefore it is OK for Russia to annex Ukraine"). But those monuments should all have been demolished in 1991.
Replies from: bokov-1, frontier64↑ comment by bokov (bokov-1) · 2022-10-28T22:00:48.122Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Furthermore, it's up to the Ukrainian people to confront their dark past. Not Russians to do it for them.
Just like it's up to Americans to confront and atone for America's history of slavery. Not some neighbouring country to roll in with tanks and turn our historical/cultural/political problem into a military one.
↑ comment by frontier64 · 2022-10-29T22:21:28.073Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
From my perspective, Nazis and Commies are like twin brothers
Well this perspective is just blatantly nonsense.
Replies from: ege-erdil, hleumas↑ comment by Ege Erdil (ege-erdil) · 2022-10-29T23:07:24.398Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It's likely not an uncommon attitude among Eastern Europeans, given the relevant history. I've heard similar sentiments expressed by Czech and Polish people before.
I agree that in this context it seems nonsensical, though. Ukrainian national socialists wanting to take down communist monuments is quite overdetermined; as the monuments are not only symbols of an ideology that they strongly oppose, but also of a foreign state that was an occupying force in Ukraine in living memory (and is an occupying force right now, depending on your interpretation of the continuity between the USSR and the Russian Federation).
↑ comment by Samuel Hapák (hleumas) · 2022-10-29T23:30:46.624Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Agreed. Hitler was total amateur. Commies killed much more people and actually managed to terrorize people for almost a century.
comment by Viliam · 2022-10-28T20:57:43.268Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
In June 2014, a Gallup poll found that 71.3% of Crimeans saw the role of Russia in the crisis as mostly positive while only 8.8% saw it as mostly negative.
The linked document mentions "cessation of broadcasting of some Ukrainian TV channels" in Crimea; not sure what that refers to. The interesting part is that most people in the region report getting their information mostly from television. In 2012 this referred to Ukrainian TV channels. In 2014, after annexation by Russia, this referred to Russian TV channels.
So I am tempted to interpret this poll as: "people mostly make their opinions based on what they see on TV, and after non-Russian TV channels became unavailable, most people concluded that Russia is the good guy."
This of course does not disagree with the premise of the article that the population of Crimea may not welcome the Ukrainian army. Just adding some context.
Replies from: jmh↑ comment by jmh · 2022-10-30T15:15:37.636Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Wondering if another take might be that for most people life under Ukraine or under Russia rule is largely the same. That would certainly make taking what one hears on TV -- which ever source you're being fed -- as truth and so the views and values what represent the "good guy" side.
Replies from: Viliam↑ comment by Viliam · 2022-10-30T16:42:21.195Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Multiple things are happening, it would be hard to disentangle them in absence of more detailed data.
- Some people genuinely prefer Russia's rule.
- Some people think it's the same, so they favor status quo to yet another fight.
- Some people think it's slightly worse, but still not worth yet another fight.
- Some people who didn't like Russia's rule were killed or left Crimea.
- Some new people arrived from Russia.
- Some people are okay with Russia's rule based on what they learn from Russian TV, but they would not be okay if they also had access to non-Russian TV.
- Some people do not trust the anonymity of the poll, and believe (correctly or not) that they would be punished if they voted against Russia.
All of these contribute to the poll in the same direction, but from outside some of them could be interpreted as "Russia good" and some could be interpreted as "Russia bad". The poll alone does not tell us the proportion of that.
comment by Teerth Aloke · 2022-10-29T05:06:37.040Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What is your assessment of reports of Russian atrocities against Ukrainian civilians? (I have come to doubt a lot of what I hear in the news)
comment by Signer · 2022-10-28T16:48:13.296Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The laws declared among other Stepan Bandera, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army to be national heroes who aren’t allowed to be insulted.
Was skeptical about "aren’t allowed to be insulted" part, so here is the law if someone also wants to check.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-28T17:45:41.089Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I think the paragraph in question is:
Стаття 6. Відповідальність за порушення законодавства про статус борців за незалежність України у XX столітті
1. Громадяни України, іноземці, а також особи без громадянства, які публічно виявляють зневажливе ставлення до осіб, зазначених у статті 1 цього Закону, перешкоджають реалізації прав борців за незалежність України у XX столітті, несуть відповідальність відповідно до законодавства.
2. Публічне заперечення факту правомірності боротьби за незалежність України у XX столітті визнається наругою над пам’яттю борців за незалежність України у XX столітті, приниженням гідності Українського народу і є протиправним.
According to https://khpg.org/en/1450571329 the last part translates into something like this:
- Ukrainian nationals, foreigners and stateless persons who publicly express disrespect for those stipulated in Article 1 of this law … bear liability in accordance with current Ukrainian legislation.
- Public denial of the legitimacy of the struggle for Ukraine’s independence in the XX century is deemed desecration of the memory of fighters for Ukraine’s independence in the XX century, denigration of the dignity of the Ukrainian people and is unlawful.
As far as I understand the sources I read they see "publicly express disrespect" as equivalent to "insult".
Replies from: mruwnik↑ comment by mruwnik · 2022-10-28T19:23:00.498Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This is a real problem in Poland. On the one hand, Ukrainians are to Poland as Poles are to west Europe (cheap hard labour), so both side want to keep up good relations. On the other hand, Bandera's boys did play at genocide. On the third hand, they're the only thing keeping the Russians away. So you get this dance between "our brother Ukrainians need help, let's show everyone how nice we are" and "they murdered my father and stole my land and now don't even have the good grace to apologise".
comment by Chinese Room (中文房间) · 2022-10-28T15:54:50.068Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Addendum WRT Crimean economic situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Crimean_Canal, which provided 85% of the peninsula's water supply, was shut down from 2014 to 2022, reducing land under cultivation 10-fold, which had a severe effect of the region's economics
Replies from: i-b, ChristianKl↑ comment by I B (i-b) · 2022-10-30T16:33:54.672Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
- The new "authorities" of Crimea de facto refused to pay for water supply of the peninsula - to this day the issue of repayment of debts of water users of Crimea to the Office of the North Crimean Canal in the amount of 1.7 million hryvnia in 2013 remains unclear.
- In 2015 Ukrainians proposed a new supply contract in accordance with international instruments, most notably the UN General Assembly Resolution of March 27, 2014 but Russians refused.
- Crimea is occupied, so international humanitarian law applies to its territory. Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention "Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War" obliges the occupying state to provide the local population of the occupied territory with food, medicines and other necessary things, in particular water for drinking and domestic needs.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-30T16:37:31.275Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It might be worthwhile to add those details to the Wikipedia article.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-28T16:01:47.335Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yes, that likely didn't make the government in Kyiv popular with the average Crimean either.
Replies from: Tapataktcomment by ryan_b · 2022-11-02T14:07:53.120Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What are your thoughts about the object level of the conflict in Ukraine and Russia, and what bearing do you think they have on the Crimea question?
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-02T21:59:43.942Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I do think there's a lot that could be said about the object level of the conflict in Ukraine and Russia.
In general, I feel like the desire to have short condensed answers to big conflicts like that does not help with actually understanding what's going on at a deeper level.
If you want something short, it's something like: "War is a zero-sum game that destroys a lot of utility, therefore it's good to end the war as soon as possible."
Replies from: ryan_b↑ comment by ryan_b · 2022-11-03T13:32:01.176Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I am happy with longer explanations, if you have the time. To be more specific about the kind of things I'm interested in:
- Do you think Ukrainian forces are able to launch a campaign into Crimea?
- Do you think Russian forces are able to respond in time?
- If Russian forces do respond in time, do you think they will provide effective resistance?
In my model these kinds of questions tend to have a much bigger impact on diplomatic decisions than rhetorical or propaganda ones, and the recent history of the war has generated a lot more uncertainty about them through Russia's surprising underperformance.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-03T14:36:52.090Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't think that I have strong insight into the on-the-ground military battle. That said, Crimea isn't an island but a peninsula, which means there is a landbridge. As such I would expect that it depends on the number of weapons and other support that the West provides whether or not Ukraine will be able to launch a campaign into Crimea.
If anyone has read any analysis that suggests otherwise, I would be happy to see it, and given that my own assessment rests on little information there's a good chance that it might change my mind.
comment by Lao Mein (derpherpize) · 2022-10-31T16:24:03.102Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I don't see a potential insurgency as being significant. Crimea has a population of 2.2 million, which will probably drop below 2 million if the Ukrainians ever retake it due to the exodus of the pro-Russian population. Ukraine itself has a population of 30+ million and is directly adjacent. The terrain is flat, with pretty good infrastructure. Ukraine views it as an integral part of its nation, and Crimea is considered strategically and politically vital. They are probably willing to sustain a costly and expensive counter-insurgency if a resistance movement arises, and if it becomes too successful will be willing to expel ethnic Russians over losing Crimea.
None of these things bode well for a pro-Russian insurgency. There is no path to victory here.
Replies from: sanxiyn, ChristianKl↑ comment by sanxiyn · 2022-11-03T13:58:03.582Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Looking at history, having no path to victory haven't exactly deterred insurgencies in the past. But yes, existence of Russia is a big deal. They have some place to go, unlike, say, Koreans under Japanese rule, who had no place to go.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-03T17:14:54.594Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The North Irish could have gone to Ireland, that didn't stop them from bombing British targets for decades.
Replies from: Richard_Kennaway↑ comment by Richard_Kennaway · 2022-11-04T09:43:45.302Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Those who wanted to be part of the Republic of Ireland could have done that, and those who wanted Northern Ireland to be part of the United Kingdom could have gone to Great Britain. But who will emigrate for someone else's convenience? These are not squabbling children that the adults in the room just want to shut up, justice and their own desires be damned. The reason that there is a Northern Ireland situation is that a substantial proportion of the population wants union with the Republic and a substantial proportion wants union with Britain. This has been true ever since the Irish failed to winkle the British out of the north in their war of independence, and while the proportions have changed somewhat over the last century, it remains true today. There is no solution to such a situation, only a more or less uneasy truce, an agreement to disagree. Whether rule comes from Dublin or Westminster, the government will be viewed as an occupying power by a large part of the population.
Rather like the situation in the Crimea and the eastern provinces. There are substantial numbers of both Ukrainians and Russians in these places. If a border agreed to by both countries eventually gets drawn, it will not solve the conflict no matter where it is drawn. At most it will stop the fighting for long enough for everyone to rebuild for the next war.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-04T11:09:40.577Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There is no solution to such a situation
The current solution in Ireland is the Good Friday Agreement and not an agreement to disagree. It includes in Wikipedia's words:
The agreement reached was that Northern Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, and would remain so until a majority of the people both of Northern Ireland and of the Republic of Ireland wished otherwise. Should that happen, then the British and Irish governments are under "a binding obligation" to implement that choice.
[...]
The agreement affirmed a commitment to "the mutual respect, the civil rights and the religious liberties of everyone in the community". The multi-party agreement recognised "the importance of respect, understanding and tolerance in relation to linguistic diversity", especially in relation to the Irish language, Ulster Scots, and the languages of Northern Ireland's other ethnic minorities, "all of which are part of the cultural wealth of the island of Ireland".
If we would follow the same principles in Ukraine it would mean giving regions referendums to decide whether the population wants to belong to Ukraine or Russia. Respect for minority languages is also part of the agreement.
If the Western response in 2014 would have been: "Let's implement the equivalent of the Good Friday Agreement for Ukraine", Russia would have been very happy but the Ukrainians don't want to grant its ethnic Russian population an equivalent. The same would have likely been the case this year.
This post is largely a call to the West moving toward those principles in regard to Ukraine.
Replies from: Richard_Kennaway↑ comment by Richard_Kennaway · 2022-11-04T12:07:08.894Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The people and politicians of Northern Ireland do not agree. The politicians there may put their names to it, but Sinn Fein want union with the Republic, the DUP want continuing union with Britain, and the people vote accordingly. There is and can be no reconciliation between the two demands -- see the kerfuffle over border controls since Brexit. The Good Friday Agreement is no more than an agreement to stop bombing each other and put off the problem sine die.
Referenda were held in parts of Ukraine under Russian control. Do you take them seriously? This is separate from the question of what the outcome of a real referendum would be.
This post is largely a call to the West moving toward those principles in regard to Ukraine.
Since these principles are largely absent from Russia's treatment of its own peoples, this is a one-sided call. And as Russia began this with an invasion aiming at the Ukrainian capital, it is wishful thinking to imagine Putin being "happy" with cession to Russia of the territories that he is falling back on, beyond saving his domestic face.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-04T16:23:16.652Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Referenda were held in parts of Ukraine under Russian control. Do you take them seriously?
I don't think that matters much. If the West wants serious referenda it could easily set the conditions for those referenda.
The politicians there may put their names to it, but Sinn Fein want union with the Republic, the DUP want continuing union with Britain, and the people vote accordingly.
The agreement is that both sides say that the union is determined by public opinion. Within that agreement, it's possible to change public opinion about what's preferred. Both Sinn Fein and DUP agree on the fact that you can do a binding referendum about the question of what union should exist.
This is the general way you prevent violence with democracy. You agree to not decide your conflict via violence but with democratic measures. That still means you have a conflict but on the democratic field instead of a violent one.
Putin being "happy" with cession to Russia of the territories that he is falling back on, beyond saving his domestic face.
I think you underrate the importance that domestic political support has for politicians. Putin could easily say "Hey, we didn't get everything but we managed to protect the people from Donesk and Luhanzk and that is what matters."
Replies from: Richard_Kennaway↑ comment by Richard_Kennaway · 2022-11-06T14:17:32.586Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
That still means you have a conflict but on the democratic field instead of a violent one.
Well, yes. That is literally an agreement to disagree.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-03T14:39:06.079Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Ukraine is essentially broke and can't pay for anything without the West giving money for it. That was the case before the war. Back in 2014, Ukraine needed to either pledge certain economic reforms to get IMF funds, accept Russian money, or become bankrupt.
While expelling ethnic Russians from Crimea is a form of ethnic cleansing that's not as bad as genocide, it's still bad enough that it's very likely that the West likely will object to Ukraine doing ethnic cleansing.
After this war is over Ukraine it's economy is severely weakened in contrast to pre-2022, they are likely going to want to invest money into rebuilding.
With tight budgets in the United States and Europe, the willingness of the United States and Europe to sufficiently fund an effort toward rebuilding already seems unclear. Ukraine would be able to do little to prevent human rights activists and journalists to operate in Crimea and document any misdeeds they do toward the Russian population. Those unwilling to make a place in the budget to give more economic aid to Crimea will be happy to talk about that as a way to justify not giving Crimea economic help.
comment by Richard_Kennaway · 2022-10-28T22:55:27.831Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The fight of Ukraine against Russia
And not a word on the fight of Russia against Ukraine.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-28T23:48:32.240Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There's already a lot written about that elsewhere.
comment by Teerth Aloke · 2022-10-29T05:13:51.397Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Dispelling the one-sided narrative is necessary to build a consensus for peace negotiations
comment by Valdes (Cossontvaldes) · 2022-10-28T23:30:27.040Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thank you for the post. A few typos:
-
To understand the current conflicts, it’s vital what the Russian discourse means when it talks about Nazis --> Probably "it's vital to understand".
-
One argument made, about why Russia’s claims of far-right influence in Ukraine are overblown, is that far-right parties don’t have much influence is that they have relatively poor electoral results --> Two different versions of the same end of sentence.
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Holocaust to be national heroes who are shall not be criticized feels deeply wrong. --> just "who shall not be".
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-29T10:12:04.164Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I fixed the typos.
comment by Gunnar_Zarncke · 2022-11-04T00:24:07.347Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
A source not mentioned but which I stumbled on early in the conflict:
The Military Situation In The Ukraine by Jacques Baud, March 2022
Googling such sources, I have seen Baud show up in a lot of smaller, fringe, but generally kind of independent media, but not in any mainstream outlet.
It paints a starkly different picture of the situation. Time will tell if this is strange misinformation, conspiracy theory, fragments of truth, or spot on.
Here a more recent interview:
https://janataweekly.org/our-latest-interview-with-jacques-baud/
comment by shminux · 2022-10-28T17:43:00.961Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Excellent post! Current discourse lionizes Ukrainians and vilifies Russians, but it's not like there is any difference in moral character between the two groups. Russians in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine have felt and been treated like second class citizens, but also have been uninterested in learning Ukrainian language and history. The soldiers on the front lines likely behave similarly on both sides. Etc.
If there is a peace settlement at some point, it will likely be closer to the Musk's plan than Russia and the West care to admit, but openly discussing it weakens their position, so the game of chicken must continue until real negotiations start.
Replies from: mruwnik, ChristianKl↑ comment by mruwnik · 2022-10-28T19:43:02.879Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There sort of is a big difference in moral character between the two groups, though. Certainly in the case of the soldiers on the front lines. Yes, terrible things are being done by people on both sides, such is war - it creates wonderful opportunities for those lacking morals. But so far only one side has rape as part of its doctrine. Only one side is engaged in wide spread plundering etc. That seems like an important distinction.
I agree that the current discourse is not objective. It's not supposed to be - it's propaganda. I also agree that it's not Middle-earth. There is a lot of shady things going on during this birthing of a nation. That being said, this is one of the few conflicts where the Goodies and Baddies are obvious.
Replies from: mwacksen, shminux, ChristianKl↑ comment by mwacksen · 2022-10-29T11:11:14.611Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
But so far only one side has rape as part of its doctrine.
If you think Russian official military doctrine includes rape, then (and I'm trying to put this as politely as possible) you are deluded.
Only one side is engaged in wide spread plundering etc
Probably true, but I do wish we'd actually know how much plundering is going on relative to how many soldiers are there.
That seems like an important distinction.
I saw some pretty nasty psychological warfare-type stuff the Ukranians were doing that the Russian's weren't. Like sending pictures of their dead sons to Russian mothers, and it seems like Ukraine is potentially willing to kill 'pure' civilians abroad than Russia is (see the murder of Darya Dugina, yes I know about Russia going after ex-spies and arms-dealers, so it's not so clear cut). Obviously it's hard to compare two countries when one is invading, and the other is defending. But nobody can claim that either side hasn't committed atrocities.
↑ comment by shminux · 2022-10-28T20:35:23.964Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
But so far only one side has rape as part of its doctrine. Only one side is engaged in wide spread plundering etc.
Well, that was true during WWII up until the Soviet Army started winning and fighting on German soil. Then they started behaving worse than the German military. We have no idea what Ukrainian troops will do if and when they take over Crimea. Dehumanizing the enemy is happening on both sides, pretty strongly.
Replies from: mruwnik↑ comment by mruwnik · 2022-10-28T21:07:06.461Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
True. But that's sort of a different matter. Also, I'm honor bound to say that the Soviets started misbehaving before they got to German soil. I've heard a lot of horror stories.
Crimea would be fighting on Ukrainian, rather than Russian soil (that's the whole point here), so I'm not sure that it applies. It could go both ways. Especially since Ukraine is very dependent on the west, so they're likely to at least pretend to be nice.
You're totally correct about the dehumanizing, though. And it's very concerning.
Replies from: shminux, Viliam↑ comment by shminux · 2022-10-29T04:10:19.157Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Crimea would be fighting on Ukrainian, rather than Russian soil (that's the whole point here)
Yes, that is the point indeed. Well, Kyiv, Kherson and places like that are unquestionably "Ukrainian soil", Donetsk and Luhansk are sort of 50/50 (not exactly, and changing quite a bit after the war started) due to the influx of Russians over the decades, and Crimea is very disputably so. Most locals are ethnically Russians (and long persecuted Crimean Tatars) who lived there for generations and had been quite unhappy with being under the Ukrainian rule for decades, welcomed the Russian takeover. There were no widespread rapes or abuse of locals by the Russian troops taking over Crimea in 2014, as far as I know. It was all very peaceful, completely unlike what is going on in this war. Russia and its military did a lot of shit in Europe, Central Asia, and most recently Syria, and a lot of it is counts as war crimes. Taking over Crimea doesn't rank in the top 100, from what I understand.
Replies from: mruwnik↑ comment by mruwnik · 2022-10-29T07:51:57.403Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I agree with this as a general description, with the obvious caveats that it's hard to not welcome someone who's pointing a gun at you etc., since that makes it somewhat coercive, even if you'd have welcomed them anyway. Crimea really does seem to like Russia, or at least did so before the war started getting serious (I'm guessing it's more complicated now).
That being said, I was talking about it being Ukrainian soil from the point of view of the soldiers. They'd be thinking of themselves as heroes rescuing a captive population, so are more likely to be nice. Although you could imagine the opposite story, where they think of them as traitors to be punished and purged.
↑ comment by Viliam · 2022-10-28T21:48:52.224Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
[Soviet Army] started misbehaving before they got to German soil. I've heard a lot of horror stories.
Soviet Army was famous for raping women on the territories they "liberated"; at least I have heard stories about their behavior in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Not a systematic rape, like they did in Germany, but simply "soldiers doing whatever they want (with the approval of their officers), and if you complain you get shot".
Most Soviet soldiers actually had no idea what country they were currently in, and whether that country was technically an ally or an enemy. They probably didn't care anyway, considering that they also raped women recently liberated from concentration camps (link).
During socialism, Soviet Union did not allow discussion of this topic in any of its vassal states.
EDIT: According to this article, in current Russia you could get up to five years of prison for discussing this topic.
Replies from: shminux↑ comment by shminux · 2022-10-29T04:19:49.323Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Yeah, definitely wasn't taught in schools, unsurprisingly. Even in Germany (both of them) it was minimized, though at least in West Germany students learned about "Russian babies", but more from an angle "war is evil, soldiers rape", than specifically anti-Russian. At least that is my understanding. Which is kind of my original point, I would not assume that soldiers of any of the ex-Soviet countries are better than from others. It might happen that Ukrainian military leaders will be more strict in that regard, but this remains to be seen.
Replies from: Viliam↑ comment by Viliam · 2022-10-29T18:44:26.917Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
I assume that the Ukrainian army was significantly "Westernized" during the last decade.
No evidence other than dozen articles from various sources I have read recently, but the story seems consistent (still might be propaganda, though). According to those sources, NATO offered quite a lot of training for non-member countries as a part of Partnership for Peace. Ukraine took that opportunity very seriously; they had a strong motivation to get better quickly. Russia was also invited, but only did some half-assed effort, mostly using the training as a "vacation" for a few selected soldiers.
So I would assume that 10 years ago, there was not much difference between Russian and Ukrainian armed forces, from the perspective of training and professionalism. But today, there probably is.
After watching some interviews with Russian POWs, and listening to intercepted phone calls (yes, possibly strong selection bias, maybe completely staged), it seems to me that the Russia's army is organized very ineffectively, relying on numerical superiority, not caring much about how many soldiers die. To put it bluntly, Russian army seems to be used as a form of population control (of the non-Russian ethnic groups), so from this perspective occasionally dying soldiers are a feature, not a bug, as long as the war ultimately results in victory. The only problem is that in Ukraine too many soldiers are dying now, the territory is being lost, and Russia is running out of tanks. New soldiers are only given one week of training, and survive on average about one week in the battle.
Shortly, my impression is that Soviet/Russian army has always been "a very large group consisting mostly of poorly trained people". That seems to explain everything -- the rapes, the looting, and ultimately the defeat by Ukrainian army. Yes, Ukraine got lots of weapons from the West, but if both armies had an equivalent amount of training, Russia still would have won.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-28T20:09:53.091Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
In the conflict from 2014-2021 the amount of torture that both sides did was roughly the same:
It estimated the total number of conflict-related detainees subjected to torture and ill-treatment in 2014-2021 at around 4,000 – 1,500 at the hands of government agents and about 2,500 by separatists. They included an estimated 340 victims of sexual violence.
The OHCHR said that both in the government-controlled and separatist-held territories “torture and ill-treatment, including conflict-related sexual violence, were used to extract confessions or information, or to otherwise force detainees to cooperate, as well as for punitive purposes, to humiliate and intimidate, and to extort money and property.”
As far as the last year goes, we don't have yet good information about how many misdeeds each side did and there's a lot of propaganda about it on both sides where it's hard to know which claims are true.
Ukrainian military setting up bases in residential areas, schools, and hospitals and firing missiles from there is a war crime, and more than someone on the Ukrainian side just using "wonderful opportunities for those lacking morals".
It's also war crimes as part of military doctrine.
Replies from: mruwnik↑ comment by mruwnik · 2022-10-28T21:39:00.865Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It seems a bit disingenuous to put pre 2021 together with the current war. They're quite different. Especially nearer 2014 when the Ukrainian army was a joke. That being said, I reckon I could have been unfair, since I was thinking about the official stance on such matters, rather than how it plays out on the ground. The Ukrainians seem to at least pretend to care about behaving properly.
Thanks for the info on torture - I should really have investigated it myself - do you have any more data on the scale of it? A quick search only found variations on your linked article, and the 3 soldiers shot in March. Which honestly surprised me, since I assumed that I'd find a load of Polish nationalists shouting about how bad the Ukrainians are.
We don't have good info and there's lots of propaganda. I'd still bet a lot on the majority of the badness being Russian. Their army has a history of bad behavior, which seems to be repeating itself now. Looting and wanton destruction are both rampant and institutionalized.
Setting up bases in residential areas is bad. One example that comes to mind was that shopping center that got bombed in the spring because it was being used to park humvees. That being said, setting up bases in residential areas during an active conflict where you're fighting to protect/recapture said areas is a different scale of bad than stealing all washing machines in a liberated town, and then leaving booby traps once you run away. Again - a lot depends on how often this happens, proportionally. There are bad eggs in every organization. Especially if you have a monopoly on violence. The question is how it's spread out, and how deep its roots go.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-29T00:36:25.578Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
It seems a bit disingenuous to put pre 2021 together with the current war.
[...]
I'd still bet a lot on the majority of the badness being Russian. Their army has a history of bad behavior, which seems to be repeating itself now. Looting and wanton destruction are both rampant and institutionalized.
If you want to extrapolate from history, both armies have a history of torturing roughly the same number of people within the bounds of uncertainty we have for those estimates.
Besides that history, we should also expect that a good portion of the Ukrainian army comes from those street militias. I only cited the attack of the women's March as one example but there are also countless other examples of bad things they did. I would not expect that kind of people to wage war without badness.
Thanks for the info on torture - I should really have investigated it myself - do you have any more data on the scale of it?
The article does cite OHCHR which is the UN Human Rights organization. https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/arbitrary-detention-torture-and-ill-treatment-context-armed-conflict is the report.
That being said, setting up bases in residential areas during an active conflict where you're fighting to protect/recapture said areas
Most residential areas where soldiers located themselves were kilometres away from front lines. Viable alternatives were available that would not endanger civilians – such as military bases or densely wooded areas nearby, or other structures further away from residential areas. In the cases it documented, Amnesty International is not aware that the Ukrainian military who located themselves in civilian structures in residential areas asked or assisted civilians to evacuate nearby buildings – a failure to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians.
These are civilians who are Ukrainian citizens. My point is not about the badness of this particular act, it's about the kind of heuristics you need to have to think that if you are the Ukrainian army, using Ukrainian citizens as human shields is a good idea. An army that operates with those heuristics is going to do a lot of badness.
Which honestly surprised me, since I assumed that I'd find a load of Polish nationalists shouting about how bad the Ukrainians are.
There's a lesson here: People like the Polish nationalists are bad at doing research. Just like most of the COVID skeptic posts you find on social networks are also very poor in quality.
Again - a lot depends on how often this happens, proportionally.
At 22 out of 29 schools visited, Amnesty International researchers either found soldiers using the premises or found evidence of current or prior military activity – including the presence of military fatigues, discarded munitions, army ration packets and military vehicles.
To me, that sounds like it proportionally happens a lot.
All that said, if we get a peace deal that will reduce badness that both sides inflict. War is bad.
↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-28T17:52:57.565Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The US could start the real negotiations right now if they wanted to do so.
Making the Ukrainian population accept a peace settlement along the lines of what Musk proposed won't be easy. Zelensky might very well lose his presidency over such a peace settlement.
By not openly discussing it the Ukrainian population gets more and more certain that they will get Crimea back.
Replies from: Dirichlet-to-Neumann, shminux↑ comment by Dirichlet-to-Neumann · 2022-10-28T20:12:00.159Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Musk proposition gives Ukraine no significant security guarantees AND forces it to lose territory. It's basically a total win for Russia, and an excellent incentive to try again in 10 years (or maybe vs. the Baltic states or Georgia).
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-28T20:59:59.420Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The Baltic states don't have areas where Russia would gain anything from them having a referendum to join Russia because nobody would vote "Yes". The Baltic states are protected by NATO. Even for those who considered the argument about the Baltic states reasonable before the latest invasion the performance of the Russian army should clearly suggest that any violation of NATO borders is a bad idea for Russia.
It's difficult to hold territory against the wishes of the local population and produces all sorts of internal problems. The Wikileaks cable is really interesting in that it regards the Russian foreign policy crowd as wanting to avoid having to act within Ukraine.
The present Georgian situation seems to be fine for Russia without a need to do something about it. From one article:
With Georgia unlikely to join either NATO or the EU any time soon, Moscow may be increasingly resigned to, and accepting of, Tbilisi nonetheless remaining outside its foreign policy orbit. Indeed, some in Moscow argue that Russia’s recognition of both breakaways was a mistake, in that it left Tbilisi with no strategic choice save the prospect of Western integration. “If we had recognised only South Ossetia, Russia could still have traded off the fate of Abkhazia”, one expert said. The present situation may not seem ideal when seen through Russia’s eyes, but it appears to be acceptable.
As far as Ukraine goes, Ukraine can improve its military as well over the next ten years. Clearing the reasons why the Russian public wanted this war is a way to reduce incentives for another invasion as well.
Replies from: Tapatakt↑ comment by Tapatakt · 2022-11-01T14:08:24.637Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
The Baltic states don't have areas where Russia would gain anything from them having a referendum to join Russia because nobody would vote "Yes"
I don't think this is important. Results of referendums in occupied Ukrainian territories (Crimea 2014 referendum not included) are falsified anyway.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-11-01T14:14:54.338Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
We are talking about whether an Elon Musk-style peace deal that involves an independent referendum would be good.
I think that it's very unlikely that it would motivate Russia to attack the Baltic states.
↑ comment by shminux · 2022-10-28T18:44:20.768Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Sadly, the dynamics of most conflict resolutions is like that. Each party has to start believing that their initial objectives are unachievable. And that is not the case in Ukraine, or in Russia for that matter. Absent some spectacular victories by either side, it will take months of fighting before both sides are ready to talk. An external push would not help here. If you look at labor disputes, it is the same pattern. The outline of an agreement is known well in advance, but the resolve has to be tested with strikes, lockouts and sometimes violence before the inevitable outcome is grudgingly accepted by both sides.
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-28T23:50:08.209Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Most labor disputes have only two sides that really matter. In Ukraine, the decision of the United States and European nations to support Ukraine matters a great deal. The West could make its support of Ukraine more conditional.
The US can set conditions for Ukraine for its support. With the likely success of the Republicans taking Congress that could even happen.
Replies from: shminux↑ comment by shminux · 2022-10-29T04:21:34.560Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
What conditions would make sense?
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-29T10:13:49.530Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
There are a variety of moves that the US could do. If I would be Tucker Carlson or a Republican congressman I would say:
"The Ukrainian military has to stop committing war crimes with US weapons. To make sure that this happens there will be a US military unit tasked with observing the actions of the Ukrainians and publicizing war crimes committed by the Ukrainians. To make sure that the US military unit does a proper job, we should invite some people from Amnesty International to oversee that US military unit so it does a proper job."
Carlson should invite someone from Amnesty International and ask them what the US can do so that Ukraine commits fewer war crimes.
Another move would be to say:
"Ukraine will only get further military and economic aid from the United States if they make a good faith effort at negotiating a peace settlement. The congressmen should think about whether or not they believe Ukraine made the good faith effort when the next funding bill comes around"
Conditions like that could be written into the next funding bill.
Replies from: kilotaras↑ comment by kilotaras · 2022-10-29T20:02:35.744Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Did your "commit less war crimes" (link to Amnesty international) position changed in response to Villiam's comment about how Amnesty's reports work [LW · GW]?
Replies from: ChristianKl↑ comment by ChristianKl · 2022-10-29T22:15:07.584Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Hearing that someone in the Ukraine Amnesty branch stepped down because he doesn't like Amnesty called out Ukrainian war crimes, should likely make me update into the direction of Ukrainians caring less about human rights and not in the direction of them caring more.
If someone complains that X is completely normal, why are you complaining about X? You should update in the direction of them also doing X when you aren't looking.
The fact that the London office of Amnesty is neutral is a feature and not a bug.
Even if it's true that Russia is committing more war crimes than Ukraine I don't think that changes anything about it being valuable to reduce the number of war crimes that Ukraine commits.
I do think the US should tell the Ukrainians "Don't lunch the missiles we give you from residential areas." I do think that the US knows where the HIMARS missile launchers are at any time so should have an easy time to enforce this.
If you don't think that the Ukrainians commit war crimes, what would it hurt, to have a US military unit with access to all the war surveillance, making sure that's the case?